Is Oil Depletion a real thing, and will it collapse nations?

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

Ok, BP said 53 years, but I keep coming with reports that say 75+ years or more.

[Sovaal]

Ok, BP said 53 years, but I keep coming with reports that say 75+ years or more.

Now just waiting for Musk to found Vault Tec.

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

Ok, BP said 53 years, but I keep coming with reports that say 75+ years or more.

Now just waiting for Musk to found Vault Tec.

Don't talk to me about Musk. While he's masturbating about rockets, electric ceilings and drilling companies, my Tesla Model 3 keeps being delayed. *grumble grumble*

[Sovaal]

Now just waiting for Musk to found Vault Tec.

Don't talk to me about Musk. While he's masturbating about rockets, electric ceilings and drilling companies, my Tesla Model 3 keeps being delayed. *grumble grumble*

Im still waiting for someone to create an electric pickup.

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

Don't talk to me about Musk. While he's masturbating about rockets, electric ceilings and drilling companies, my Tesla Model 3 keeps being delayed. *grumble grumble*

Im still waiting for someone to create an electric pickup.

Closest thing is the Tesla truck cabs.

[Harkback Union]

It is a serious problem, but to be honest, considering that petroleum is used for a lot of things, even if we find a replacement for the energy bit, we still have issues like...

*ahem*

...plastics, modern medicine, textiles, detergents, paraffin wax, lubricants, surfactants, polymers, resins, petroleum-based solvents...

And it goes on. Even if we find a replacement for one of these, we still have the others to deal with. And frankly, unless someone can invent a replacement that deals with these that is cost-effective and sustainable, I will be amazed if by 2100, we still have modern civilization as we know it.

Are YOU prepared for the neo-1800’s?

Hell yeah!

*Puts on top hat and steampunk goggles*

[Petrolheadia]

I think that oil depletion is a serious problem. However, we won't run out of energy if we pursue more renewable forms of gaining it, such as solar, wind, and even nuclear energy.

It is a serious problem, but to be honest, considering that petroleum is used for a lot of things, even if we find a replacement for the energy bit, we still have issues like...

*ahem*

...plastics, modern medicine, textiles, detergents, paraffin wax, lubricants, surfactants, polymers, resins, petroleum-based solvents...

And it goes on. Even if we find a replacement for one of these, we still have the others to deal with. And frankly, unless someone can invent a replacement that deals with these that is cost-effective and sustainable, I will be amazed if by 2100, we still have modern civilization as we know it.

Except that oil won't run out.

It will get more expensive, but that will only drive us towards research in replacements. There already are plastics based on organic materials, like tomatoes, algae or hemp.

[Jeoguk]

It is a serious problem, but to be honest, considering that petroleum is used for a lot of things, even if we find a replacement for the energy bit, we still have issues like...

*ahem*

...plastics, modern medicine, textiles, detergents, paraffin wax, lubricants, surfactants, polymers, resins, petroleum-based solvents...

And it goes on. Even if we find a replacement for one of these, we still have the others to deal with. And frankly, unless someone can invent a replacement that deals with these that is cost-effective and sustainable, I will be amazed if by 2100, we still have modern civilization as we know it.

Except that oil won't run out.

It will get more expensive, but that will only drive us towards research in replacements. There already are plastics based on organic materials, like tomatoes, algae or hemp.

The energy and products we use in producing them at a viable scale still comes from oil, though

[Kalaron]

^ He's right, you know.

Y'know, it would have taken a special kind of lacking foresight to let climate change and species extinction become a rampant problem given that all the indicators that something was wrong were already available in the late 1970s...
Ooops.

Honestly I wouldn't be too optimistic about our capacity to anticipate problems and actually do something about them before it's too late, especially that we're currently in a situation where it's pretty clear we're running into a wall and yet the first superpower in the world has a political guideline that mostly boils down to "problems ? what problems ?".
I mean we'll probably adapt, yes. The question is, do we want to anticipate and make sure it's as smooth as possible or will we, as usual, adapt at the last moment and in the worst economic and geopolitical context possible ?

Also re:nuclear reactors : the day we'll be able to safely and surely dismantle reactors, to completely stop a reactor within a few minutes and to eliminate nuclear waste, I'll consider it as a safe and practical energy source.
I'm not entirely anti-nuclear fission and I can see it being used as another energy source for developed countries.
But nuclear fission becoming anything close to a mainstream energy source is a wild dream.

I don't think anybody would be inconvenienced by drilling in the biggest fucking ice desert in the world.

You mean aside from the fact that you would destroy entire ecosystems, add yet another risk of massive oceanic pollution ?
After all, what's biodiversity and nature protection when we can have a few more decades of oil. Silly me.
I mean why do we even care about natural parks and protected areas. No one lives here anyway.

We already can do that for literally every part of that reactor bit, except maybe "safely dismantle" but that's for hardened robots to handle and older folks where they want since tumors are less of an issue to a 70 year old man. You stop a reactor in (in seconds) with control rods since they deaden the reaction entirely by absorbing the neutrons from the reaction itself. And the waste problem is a funny problem we inflict on ourselves?
Believe it or not 85% of a nuclear fuel rod (50% for higher enrichment fuels) go unburnt. Then companies get told "lmao get rid of this and no you can't reuse the fuel and by the way can you make electricity cheaper? :>" and they naturally groan. Ironically, solving the waste problem also lowers the average cost of fission fuel once infrastructure is in place. Past that, MOX reactors also allow for yet lower prices.
To complain about nuclear waste with our current practices is, as far as I know, equivalent to filling your car completely, driving fifteen percent of the tank away and then siphoning the rest out into the grass, then complaining about the mileage per gallon of the car.

This is to say nothing for the fact that Fission reactors will be essential in the future for colonies past earth.

[Kalaron]

We'd have to get it here cost effectively

To be fair, with the current development of technology and study on the reuse of rocket parts we managed to cutdown the payload cost from ~$50000/kg in the space shuttle era to $1700/kg with Falcon Heavy. SpaceX is seemingly developing a rocket that will slash such cost to less than $100/kg so I think that it'll be feasible in the future.

*Press X to doubt*
Yeah, I doubt that they'll make one. The only rockets that operate close to that well in space are NTRs, and Space X doesn't have the rights to make those yet. If we want to recover them cheaply then we should use a massive Orion instead since Orion never really cared about tonnage in the first place.

[Constitutional Technocracy of Minecraft]

To be fair, with the current development of technology and study on the reuse of rocket parts we managed to cutdown the payload cost from ~$50000/kg in the space shuttle era to $1700/kg with Falcon Heavy. SpaceX is seemingly developing a rocket that will slash such cost to less than $100/kg so I think that it'll be feasible in the future.

*Press X to doubt*
Yeah, I doubt that they'll make one. The only rockets that operate close to that well in space are NTRs, and Space X doesn't have the rights to make those yet. If we want to recover them cheaply then we should use a massive Orion instead since Orion never really cared about tonnage in the first place.

READ THIS

BFR will be completely reusable (the only costs will be fuel and maintenance). And this is SpaceX's own design, so rights to make NTRs won't be a problem.

[Kalaron]

*Press X to doubt*
Yeah, I doubt that they'll make one. The only rockets that operate close to that well in space are NTRs, and Space X doesn't have the rights to make those yet. If we want to recover them cheaply then we should use a massive Orion instead since Orion never really cared about tonnage in the first place.

READ THIS

BFR will be completely reusable (the only costs will be fuel and maintenance). And this is SpaceX's own design, so rights to make NTRs won't be a problem.

Few small issues, one being that using it as a "transcontinental shuttle" is painfully retarded and was the first reason why this got laughed out. The second reason is precisely how bad chemical engines are and the third is in the massive amount of propellant you now have to expend for every mission involving the craft, which also involves hauling it up with another craft.
https://childrenofadeadearth.wordpress. ... kets-burn/
https://childrenofadeadearth.wordpress. ... h-baffles/
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/r ... nelist.php
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/r ... verse2.png
These links really contain a lot of the complexities of this issue, since this drive will actually be sorta unlikely to work given that it needs to carry a total of 24 kilometers a second of fuel to Titan, and at least twelve, bordering on thirteen back. More, probably, since they'll be carrying dead weight back in the form of unusable propellant. Oh and it'll take years to get back.

E: Also, NTR isn't a design so much as a class of rocket engine. It's a nuclear thermal rocket, and it's veritably the only rocket drive that be counted on for timely missions and good cargo.

[Sovaal]

Are YOU prepared for the neo-1800’s?

Hell yeah!

*Puts on top hat and steampunk goggles*

Just watch out for the starving bands of savages outside the town walls.

[Erythrean Thebes]

I don't believe the Earth will really run out of fossil fuels. I think they can continue to go deeper for a long time, and they work on doing so constantly. In fact, they already eliminated the previous peak oil prediction by this means. It was supposed to be roughly a decade from now, but now it's likely to be decades away, and I have to think it will probably get pushed back again by another innovation in drilling.

I know that the population growth of Earth is exponential and so, depending on with how much integrity and responsibility the estimates are done, it could be sooner than actually forecasted. Will it collapse nations? I have to suspect there are some nations which won't be able to innovate their economy by that time, or won't innovate for other stupid reasons, and consequently lose a lot of their economic production as a consequence. But really, won't these nations collapse even sooner when large segments of the global economy convert to renewables? They have to collapse either way because no matter what, power won't come from oil anymore at some point in the mid-term future of Earth.

[LimaUniformNovemberAlpha]

Natural disasters happen. If a natural disaster can cause a supposedly "safe" reactor to melt down, it's not safe.

Also, "rooftop" solar isn't the only source of solar power. I'd like to see it broken down by photovoltaic vs. thermal. A source on the wind one would be nice too.

Not all areas of the world are affected by tsunamis. If my house was in Japan right in the line of the 2011 tsunami, it would not be a safe building by your definition.

And about that source... https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2013/09/29/forget-eagle-deaths-wind-turbines-kill-humans/, courtesy of Wikipedia - Energy accidents

A house doesn't irradiate an entire city when it explodes.

Anyway...

Source 1: "Wind energy kills a mere 100 people or so per trillion kWhrs, the majority from falls during maintenance activities" in other words something that sounds like it could be reduced with harnesses and/or parachutes and/or better safety practices, but even if not, is still safer to bystanders than nuclear. You would probably have to do something wrong to fall from a wind turbine... and to be fair, we all make mistakes, which is why you shouldn't rely on technologies that go horribly wrong when mistakes are made. But you wouldn't have to do anything wrong to be harmed by a nuclear meltdown.

Source 2: Citing a cesspool of BS like Wikipedia is absurd enough as it is, but I did follow it to its sources, which said: "Workers still regularly fall off wind turbines during maintenance." So, see above.

[Petrolheadia]

Not all areas of the world are affected by tsunamis. If my house was in Japan right in the line of the 2011 tsunami, it would not be a safe building by your definition.

And about that source... https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2013/09/29/forget-eagle-deaths-wind-turbines-kill-humans/, courtesy of Wikipedia - Energy accidents

A house doesn't irradiate an entire city when it explodes.

Anyway...

Source 1: "Wind energy kills a mere 100 people or so per trillion kWhrs, the majority from falls during maintenance activities" in other words something that sounds like it could be reduced with harnesses and/or parachutes and/or better safety practices, but even if not, is still safer to bystanders than nuclear. You would probably have to do something wrong to fall from a wind turbine... and to be fair, we all make mistakes, which is why you shouldn't rely on technologies that go horribly wrong when mistakes are made. But you wouldn't have to do anything wrong to be harmed by a nuclear meltdown.

Source 2: Citing a cesspool of BS like Wikipedia is absurd enough as it is, but I did follow it to its sources, which said: "Workers still regularly fall off wind turbines during maintenance." So, see above.

1. And many nuclear malfunctions can also be prevented. For example, Three Mile Island could have been stopped by better warnings, and Chernobyl was a BS "safety test".
Also, a meltdown is usually just the core overheating. Usually the worst that happens is evacuating the plant and dumping the radioactive material; Chernobyl and Fukushima were what the Germans call GAU (German acronym for "Greatest Disaster Imaginable").

2. When somebody calls a source as reliable as Wikipedia "BS", the BS is likely on their side.

[Pope Joan]

A house doesn't irradiate an entire city when it explodes.

Anyway...

Source 1: "Wind energy kills a mere 100 people or so per trillion kWhrs, the majority from falls during maintenance activities" in other words something that sounds like it could be reduced with harnesses and/or parachutes and/or better safety practices, but even if not, is still safer to bystanders than nuclear. You would probably have to do something wrong to fall from a wind turbine... and to be fair, we all make mistakes, which is why you shouldn't rely on technologies that go horribly wrong when mistakes are made. But you wouldn't have to do anything wrong to be harmed by a nuclear meltdown.

Source 2: Citing a cesspool of BS like Wikipedia is absurd enough as it is, but I did follow it to its sources, which said: "Workers still regularly fall off wind turbines during maintenance." So, see above.

1. And many nuclear malfunctions can also be prevented. For example, Three Mile Island could have been stopped by better warnings, and Chernobyl was a BS "safety test".
Also, a meltdown is usually just the core overheating. Usually the worst that happens is evacuating the plant and dumping the radioactive material; Chernobyl and Fukushima were what the Germans call GAU (German acronym for "Greatest Disaster Imaginable").

2. When somebody calls a source as reliable as Wikipedia "BS", the BS is likely on their side.

Three Mile Island could have been prevented by not leaving the plant under the control of people without even high school diplomas (GED). General Public Utilities did not believe in paying for college graduates. They thought some training and videos would be sufficient to educate their workfarce,

[Yagon]

Three Mile Island could have been prevented by not leaving the plant under the control of people without even high school diplomas (GED). General Public Utilities did not believe in paying for college graduates. They thought some training and videos would be sufficient to educate their workfarce,

Now I'm picturing those really low quality bad-acting bad-direction bad-lighting training videos from jobs I worked decades ago, and seeing somebody flatly saying "Nucular safety is a very important part of your job here. Make sure your uniform is cleaning and that your radiation badge does not indicate you are dead. If you are dead, you must notify your manager in writing within three days."

[LimaUniformNovemberAlpha]

A house doesn't irradiate an entire city when it explodes.

Anyway...

Source 1: "Wind energy kills a mere 100 people or so per trillion kWhrs, the majority from falls during maintenance activities" in other words something that sounds like it could be reduced with harnesses and/or parachutes and/or better safety practices, but even if not, is still safer to bystanders than nuclear. You would probably have to do something wrong to fall from a wind turbine... and to be fair, we all make mistakes, which is why you shouldn't rely on technologies that go horribly wrong when mistakes are made. But you wouldn't have to do anything wrong to be harmed by a nuclear meltdown.

Source 2: Citing a cesspool of BS like Wikipedia is absurd enough as it is, but I did follow it to its sources, which said: "Workers still regularly fall off wind turbines during maintenance." So, see above.

1. And many nuclear malfunctions can also be prevented. For example, Three Mile Island could have been stopped by better warnings, and Chernobyl was a BS "safety test".
Also, a meltdown is usually just the core overheating. Usually the worst that happens is evacuating the plant and dumping the radioactive material; Chernobyl and Fukushima were what the Germans call GAU (German acronym for "Greatest Disaster Imaginable").

2. When somebody calls a source as reliable as Wikipedia "BS", the BS is likely on their side.

1. In other words, shit happens, and whatever safety measures people have in theory aren't used in practice. Better that happen with lower-stakes methods like wind and solar than with nuclear.

2. O RLY?

[Sovaal]

1. And many nuclear malfunctions can also be prevented. For example, Three Mile Island could have been stopped by better warnings, and Chernobyl was a BS "safety test".
Also, a meltdown is usually just the core overheating. Usually the worst that happens is evacuating the plant and dumping the radioactive material; Chernobyl and Fukushima were what the Germans call GAU (German acronym for "Greatest Disaster Imaginable").

2. When somebody calls a source as reliable as Wikipedia "BS", the BS is likely on their side.

1. In other words, shit happens, and whatever safety measures people have in theory aren't used in practice. Better that happen with lower-stakes methods like wind and solar than with nuclear.

2. O RLY?

Pfft, I seriously doubt wind and solar will ever be able to meet present energy demands, let alone future ones.

[Pope Joan]

Three Mile Island could have been prevented by not leaving the plant under the control of people without even high school diplomas (GED). General Public Utilities did not believe in paying for college graduates. They thought some training and videos would be sufficient to educate their workfarce,

Now I'm picturing those really low quality bad-acting bad-direction bad-lighting training videos from jobs I worked decades ago, and seeing somebody flatly saying "Nucular safety is a very important part of your job here. Make sure your uniform is cleaning and that your radiation badge does not indicate you are dead. If you are dead, you must notify your manager in writing within three days."

.

[Saiwania]

Three Mile Island could have been prevented by not leaving the plant under the control of people without even high school diplomas (GED). General Public Utilities did not believe in paying for college graduates. They thought some training and videos would be sufficient to educate their workfarce,

Can you prove this? So far as I can tell, it'd have happened with or without degree holding people on staff.

It was an electrical or mechanical failure of the main feed water pumps. The instruments in the control room were lying to the plant operators that the pilot-operated relief valve was closed when in fact, it was still open. Other instruments available to plant staff provided inadequate or misleading information, so of course it overheated if the wrong actions were taken.

At its root, the equipment is to blame.

[Constitutional Technocracy of Minecraft]

READ THIS

BFR will be completely reusable (the only costs will be fuel and maintenance). And this is SpaceX's own design, so rights to make NTRs won't be a problem.

Few small issues, one being that using it as a "transcontinental shuttle" is painfully retarded and was the first reason why this got laughed out. The second reason is precisely how bad chemical engines are and the third is in the massive amount of propellant you now have to expend for every mission involving the craft, which also involves hauling it up with another craft.
https://childrenofadeadearth.wordpress. ... kets-burn/
https://childrenofadeadearth.wordpress. ... h-baffles/
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/r ... nelist.php
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/r ... verse2.png
These links really contain a lot of the complexities of this issue, since this drive will actually be sorta unlikely to work given that it needs to carry a total of 24 kilometers a second of fuel to Titan, and at least twelve, bordering on thirteen back. More, probably, since they'll be carrying dead weight back in the form of unusable propellant. Oh and it'll take years to get back.

E: Also, NTR isn't a design so much as a class of rocket engine. It's a nuclear thermal rocket, and it's veritably the only rocket drive that be counted on for timely missions and good cargo.

1. I misunderstood what you meant by NTR in my last post. However, a nuclear thermal rocket has crappy thrust and specific impulse (if you don't play KSP, this is a measure of the efficiency of a rocket engine) within the atmosphere
2. This is designed for crewed missions to Mars, not Titan. Did you read the Wikipedia link!?
3. SpaceX plans to launch each BFR into low Earth orbit, launch a tanker to refuel it and then return to Earth, and send the other ship to Mars after being refuelled. Uncrewed cargo missions will also be sent to Mars to assemble a propellant plant on Mars that will make fuel via ISRU, so the ship can be refuelled on Mars for a direct flight back to Earth (possible due to Mars' lower gravity than Earth). Therefore, they don't need to carry additional fuel for returning.
4. Mars is closer than Titan, and a round trip may take up to 2 years

[Foulflickering]

I am looking for a DC powered air pump that can connect to a charge controller. Note that the solar panel is five watts and theres a 9ah battery and a 10 ah controller (pvm i believe).

[Petrolheadia]

1. And many nuclear malfunctions can also be prevented. For example, Three Mile Island could have been stopped by better warnings, and Chernobyl was a BS "safety test".
Also, a meltdown is usually just the core overheating. Usually the worst that happens is evacuating the plant and dumping the radioactive material; Chernobyl and Fukushima were what the Germans call GAU (German acronym for "Greatest Disaster Imaginable").

2. When somebody calls a source as reliable as Wikipedia "BS", the BS is likely on their side.

1. In other words, shit happens, and whatever safety measures people have in theory aren't used in practice. Better that happen with lower-stakes methods like wind and solar than with nuclear.

2. O RLY?

1. Better have that rarely happen with something as powerful and as rarely dangerous as nuclear.

2. And then Wikipedia always gets edited back.