Quote:
Originally Posted by TSGracchus
Read the fine print, folks. It's shale oil. It's not a new discovery, it's just that until the price of oil soared through the roof, it couldn't be extracted at a profit. Now it can. So what?
The problem is not that we're running out of oil, but that we're running out of cheap oil. Approximately 50% of the oil that was in the ground when we started pumping it is still there (that's what "oil peak" means -- not that all the oil is gone, but that half of it is, and what's left is harder and more expensive to pump). But what made oil such a wonderful energy source for so many years is that it was both plentiful and cheap, and it ain't no more.
Not a solution. We need to increase efficiency, and switch to non-fossil-fuel sources of energy. The time to start doing that was 30 years ago, but since we can't turn the clock back, we need to start now.
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Well, in fact we are far more efficient in the use of energy than we were in the 70s: about
twice as efficient.
And as for oil being plentiful and cheap - that was stated precisely the same way, word for word, in the 70s and early 80s. Then prices imploded in the mid 80s and we had another 15 years of cheap and plentiful oil.
As for exploring alternative energy sources - we are in rare agreement on that one.
