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If how much oil is ultimately available for human consumption were real scientific knowledge, there wouldn't be an oil futures market. Why would there be a market for price discovery at all if the total amount that can ever be extracted is already known? More importantly, why would any private consumption be allowed at all, as all remaining total sum can be expressed in days of military operation and will be horded as such.
The very fact that we are allowed to enjoy personal liberty all is because the ultimate answer is an known, and needs to be discovered. Frederick Hayek addressed the "Pretense of Knowledge" in great detail, and how such pretense is the road to serfdom. About a century ago, many of the world's leading scientists thought humanity was on the verge of completing scientific discoveries, such "fatal conceit" quickly gave way to the bloody 20th century. As far as oil on the planet is concerned, less than 0.1% of the earth's surface has been explored to a depth of more than 6 kilometer out of 6000+ kilometers. That's something on the order of having explored 0.0001% of the earth's volume . . . somehow the planet is fully catalogd for how much mineral resource of any kind there is? Not even close. The "Reserve" concept has to be understood as production lead time, not ultimate availability.
I agree with the point you hinted at: gasoline is actually a very efficient battery pack. The reason being that this particular battery pack does not have to carry more than half of its reactant by weight (oxygen), and does not have to carry any of the reaction waste (CO2 and water vapor), unlike the electrical batteries that have to carry around all of its reactants and reaction products till the next re-charge.
The sun is not the primary source of energy on this planet, as far as hydrocarbons are concerned. Hydrocarbons (including oil) act as a battery system that transports nuclear decay energy from inside the planet and gravitational energy between primarily the sun and the moon. Nuclear decay energy is mostly Uranium and Thorium; all the Radon and Helium gas discovered on this planet has to be from continuous nuclear decay because Radon's half-life is way too short to be from when the earth was formed, and Helium is not something that the earth's gravity can hold. Both of them have to be continuous produced from underground. The tidal forces caused by the moon also twists and buckles the earth's mantel and cause friction that generate heat under the earth's crust. These energy sources produce the high temperature and high pressure environment in the subduction zones where water and limestones (CaCO3) are turned into their component hydrogen and carbon, eventually forming the various carbon-hydrogen chains that we call hydrocarbon, starting with Methane, Ethane, . . . Octane, . . ., all the way to coal as hydrogen are stripped away by bacteria that feed on the hydrocarbon. Claiming that oil is from dead animals is about as silly some post-apolypotic intelligent being arriving on earth seeing cars often being found with gasoline therefore coming to the conclusion that cars produced oil on "old earth."
What humanity is doing with oil today is akin to hunter-gathering. The great manana nature has the oil conveying nuclear and gravitational energy to us in a useable form, just like buffaloes and wildbeasts conveyed solar energy produced grass (often poisonous and mostly low energy density) to humanity in a form that is of high energy density. As humanity multiplied, limiting meat consumption always meant wars: nobody really wants to limit their own consumption; all talks of consumption is about limiting someone else' consumption (like limiting the guys with more than 4-cylinders, but exempt me, despite myself having 4 more than the vast majority of humanity). The problem wasn't solved until humanity figured how to raise cattles and other farm animals, so that more meant could be produced per acre. Likewise, IMHO, the oil problem has to be solved through mastery of nuclear energy, then synthetically produce gasoline, as a form of battery pack conveying nuclear-sourced energy in a more convenient form.
Before anyone asks why then not goose government funding for nuclear energy research. The answer is quite simple: if you want something to fail, let the monopolist run the show. Government nuclear research was the reason why Thorium based nuclear power was abandoned in favor of Uranium based ones despite the latter's much higher level of danger: the latter is much more conducive to nuclear weapons production. Thorium would be much safer for energy production, but would be infeasible for yielding weapons grade material. So Thorium research was defunded by the government in the 70's.
posted by 76.118.39...
, Sat, 30 Apr 2011 23:53:55
, Sat, 30 Apr 2011 15:11:07, Sat, 30 Apr 2011 05:06:04, Sat, 30 Apr 2011 13:34:41, Sat, 30 Apr 2011 04:28:11
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