[deathhand]

It's also just like any 4x strategy game. You can harvest resources and build and build but once those resources are depleted they deplete very fast because you have grown capacity for intake.

I'm glad we aren't worried about peak oil anymore but the climate and food scarity is going to be the next pitfall to avoid.

[davidw]

The author's wikipedia page shows he wrote some books about Peak Oil...

[anonporridge]

When I look at this chart, I'm still pretty worried about peak fossil fuel happening too soon. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-energy-substitutio...

[vpribish]

peak oil will happen, hopefully soon. but not because we run out of oil - it is nearly goddamn endless - but because we choose to stop burning it for all the reasons we are so familiar with.

[jeffvader]

"we'll found more soon"

[Loughla]

Wait, when did we stop being concerned about peak oil and why?

[jes5199]

combination of two things; first, we came up with new ways to get oil out of the ground, so it extended the deadline considerably. second, economic growth and oil burning decoupled, so instead of needing more and more oil we hit a steady number.

hopefully, we transition off it soon. but we’re no longer thought likely to run out, even if we don’t

[vlovich123]

I don’t see a viable plan to transition for plastics, so I suspect that oil consumption will remain substantial until plastics get enough expensive that we find viable alternatives. Conversely I don’t think we’re actually in danger of transitioning off of oil consumption in any real way in the next 20 years.

[Alpha3031]

Petrochemical use is currently what, about 20% of total crude oil use? Yeah we'll probably need to start at least trying to tackle that soon even if the CO2 in the atmosphere thing is more urgent, but there's no pressing need to be a viable plan for 100% reduction now if we won't even think about using it for probably a decade at least. We've got the time to move forward one small step at a time and then verify each step so it isn't like plastic recycling ("Oh yeah we'll totally do it" *dumps in lower income country*) and measurable goals on shorter timeframes (say, 30% reduction by 2030) are much more achievable and effective than a vague long term goal of not using any more oil ever, not even a little bit. There's no shame in picking the low hanging fruit first.

[vivekd]

Plastic is only cheap because it's a byproduct of oil. It'll stop being as cheap and plentiful if we stop producing oil and we'll naturally move to cheaper substitutes

Although I don't think oil use is going to end anytime soon

[ggm]

Plastics have many substitution options outside of the narrow range where it's the best choice.

I'd be more concerned about how gas is feedstock for pharma, and fertiliser.

[dabber]

> I'd be more concerned about how gas is feedstock for pharma, and fertiliser.

Would you elaborate on what you mean by this? I don't follow.

[ggm]

Gas, including ethylene from oil production, is used heavily in pharma, plastics and fertiliser production. If oil becomes uneconomic to produce, the supply of drugs, explosives, plastic and fertiliser is at risk, at the very least of price shocks.

Peak oil is not really just about untapped stocks, it's about the economics of supply and consumption. We won't "run out" of oil, it will stop being viable to produce it when gasoline ceases to be so economically important.

The feedstock uses of ethylene and lng are justified by the underlying consumption of petrol, diesel and heavy oils. It's profit from waste. If the gasoline isn't used the refineries shut down. If the entire cycle has to convert to fertiliser the economics of fertiliser change, and prices change.

[adrianN]

Plastic can be made from hydrogen and carbon. Plastic is a minuscule fraction of our oil consumption. Maybe the oil-free synthesis path becomes economically attractive once we stop burning oil for energy and plastic feedstock is no longer a mostly free byproduct of that.

[vlovich123]

https://www.statista.com/topics/8418/petrochemical-industry-...

16% of world oil consumption is not nothing. AFAIK we don’t have good replacements and cost isn’t the only reason. And even if it is, think about how pervasive petrchochemical plastics are - it seems unlikely we’d go back so even if we switched to more expensive replacements, that means the price of a lot of stuff is going to go up by a lot…

[shiftpgdn]

Nuclear reactors and thermal depolymerization seems promising. We could probably mine every landfill site in America for a century before needing to think about something else.

[adrianN]

I bet a lot of that 16% is fertilizer.

[chrisco255]

Because there's hundreds of years of known supply even at current consumption and we already have viable alternatives.

[code_biologist]

Any chance you’re a Doomberg reader? I’ve followed his recent writing and interviews on peak oil and I also enjoyed this Peak Prosperity video [1] arguing in opposition, looking at the short lifetime of fracked oil fields and lack of big post-Permian deposit finds. Also, oil is necessary as feedstock and in manufacturing infrastructure for oil alternatives.

Still, it’s frustrating that there’s such a disagreement on basic facts between two quantitative and careful thinkers.

[1] https://youtu.be/__DEDPhs5O4

[SV_BubbleTime]

Really?

Name one that is safe to handle, easy to convert, and has even 1/2 the energy density.

[jes5199]

I’m convinced that “density” is not a helpful metric here. There’s plenty of diffuse energy, and it’s advantageous to collect it near where it’s used, rather than make big pipes and ship it around

[vlovich123]

Disagree. Solar doesn’t work at night and it’s horribly inefficient to have a bunch of local batteries everywhere compared with centralized power generation with relatively cheap wiring distributing the centrally generated energy. Local generation is a greedy solution (I got mine) that has a shared cost (centrally generated power for those who can’t generate their own spikes massively in price). It’s basically a greedy “rich get richer” solution that also doesn’t actually solve the carbon problem because other people need electricity too.

[jes5199]

I don’t see how fossil can be considered efficient when you have to consider digging it up, shipping it around, refining it, shipping it around again, burning it, piping the electricity for long distances. and if you want to argue that solar installations advantage the rich, surely you have to count the supply chain capital involved in fossil fuels! Solar plus battery is cheap and getting cheaper. “Inefficient” battery storage just means you need another panel. Every step of the fossil fuel supply chain is capital-intensive, land-intensive, and dirty

[ggm]

Always this "horribly inefficient" claim. Yet, several advanced economies are doing it. You think you're smarter than the power industry economists who say batteries are OK?

Basically, have you tried considering you might be .. wrong?

[vlovich123]

For grid power, nuclear and hydro beat oil by significant margins. For shipping we’d need to deploy nuclear reactors that could be safe to operate on the seas. For cars and trains, electrified tied to a fossil free grid is enough and is happening however slowly. For planes and land shipping trucks that’s trickier and not sure what the answer there would be. But if we cut shipping, grid and automotive fossil fuels we’d be reducing global emissions to almost 0. It’s not enough at this point due to unlocked runaway effects meaning the 1.5C warming is long in our rearview in terms of being an unavoidable result and it’ll take us a long time to transition based on the current political approaches which means I suspect 3C or even worse is highly likely within the next 50 years.

Beyond arresting the worsening conditions (which we’re failing at spectacularly) I’m not sure how to unwind the damage. Technology is unlikely to save us unless we get insanely lucky somehow (like fusion reactors that are trivial to scale and trivial to make cheaply and then shoving all that energy into carbon recapture at a scale we don’t know how to do because even at current levels it’s diffuse enough that it takes a long time to capture a small amount of carbon).

[matthewdgreen]

Ultimately we’re going to need to get lucky on grid decarbonization (recent solar PV and wind bulldouts, particularly in China, are an incredibly welcome sign that this is happening.) And I’m afraid we might also need to do some kind of geoengineering. I’m much more nervous about the second part, because the first seems to be on an economic glide path that might make it self-fulfilling. But the second relies on a lot of coordination that might not happen.

[SV_BubbleTime]

That’s all very ideal. And until it happens, oil and coal are key.

I’m all on board for nuclear. So just start convincing the “green” types that are stopping it.

[chrisco255]

Nuclear is like 2,000,000 times more dense than oil and it's perfectly safe with proper engineering. Far more people have died harvesting oil, nevermind the geopolitical problems with it, and far more people have died from coal mining than nuclear power plant disasters.

Nuclear alone is enough to sustain civilization nearly infinitely.

Meanwhile, natural gas is plentiful, geothermal is plentiful, solar and wind is plentiful and all of these contribute to energy availability.

Oil still has its uses, it's not going to go away, but I suspect consumption will be reduced by 90% or more in the next 2 decades.