Peak-oil explained (Dutch) **Update: English version too **

[Jostyrostelli]

Yeah I think we can live without oil, but we are so used to machines and devices made out of plastics, I think it will be very expensive to find a good alternative for EVERY device made out of plastic. I'm not into plastics or chemistry so I don't know if there are promising developments on the way but I think things will dissapear because we don't have plastics anymore.

 

[Cruzz563]

...so I read the English version of Josty's article...
Suffice to say, "Oh shit." I mean we, as a human race, should be concerned about this, I think one of the first instances of this happening was the rolling black-outs California suffered years ago. I read page 1 of this thread, I'm going to read 2 tomoz, I'm going to bed atm so I'm not about to read it now...5:52 in the morning here

 

[chaos386]

c) when we don't use plastics anymore, we'll go back to what we used before. metals, wax paper etc...

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

Seriously. Do you have any idea how important plastics are? If you look at a detailed overview of man's advancements in materials technology, we depend on plastics today more than we depended on metals during the industrial revolution. Plastics also don't mean 'cheap'. Since when did a choice of car interior dictate the importance of something?

God forbid anything ever happen to you, would you prefer to have your IV bags and tubing made out of leather and woodgrain?

Mate rubber could easily be subsituted. Rubber comes from trees.

And what are we going to use for disposable syringes? Glass? What about lubricants? Packing materials? Circuit boards for computers?

 

[Jostyrostelli]

c) when we don't use plastics anymore, we'll go back to what we used before. metals, wax paper etc...

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

Seriously. Do you have any idea how important plastics are? If you look at a detailed overview of man's advancements in materials technology, we depend on plastics today more than we depended on metals during the industrial revolution. Plastics also don't mean 'cheap'. Since when did a choice of car interior dictate the importance of something?

God forbid anything ever happen to you, would you prefer to have your IV bags and tubing made out of leather and woodgrain?

Mate rubber could easily be subsituted. Rubber comes from trees.

And what are we going to use for disposable syringes? Glass? What about lubricants? Packaging materials? Circuit boards for computers?

Exaclty. There is no substitute for ALL the different types of plastic, rubber, or other thermoplasts/thermoharders (sp, dutch)

 

[swek]

And what are we going to use for disposable syringes? Glass? What about lubricants? Packaging materials? Circuit boards for computers?

I think we have to say goodbye to the idea that everything should be packaged in plastics. To be honest it bothered me for a long time that everything I buy is burried in at least three layers of plastics.

 

[Jostyrostelli]

Yeah I ordered a printer cartridge from internet and it came with a jiffybag, a cardboard box, with the cartridge packed in a heavy plastic bag. Then the cartridge itself is plastic, and so is my printer. No more essays to print

 

[chaos386]

And what are we going to use for disposable syringes? Glass? What about lubricants? Packaging materials? Circuit boards for computers?

I think we have to say goodbye to the idea that everything should be packaged in plastics. To be honest it bothered me for a long time that everything I buy is burried in at least three layers of plastics.

Oops, I meant packing materials. :lol: Like styrofoam, for shipping things.

 

[toma_alimosh]

There is more oil in Alberta's tar sands than humankind has used to date. They just need better technology to extract it.

well, that's the thing, I'm not worried that there won't be more oil, I'm worried that the oil will run out from places where you can extract them easily and in great quantities. (aka middle eastern oil wells, alaska, etc.) and then they'd have to go to remote, inhospitable places to get it, like antarctica, which would cost them a huge amount of money, that they're going to charge their customers for. So before oil even runs out, it will become too expensive to sell to the public, and people are going to fight over it, steal it, maybe even start wars over it. Who knows that might just be the cause of a future World War 3.

 

[toma_alimosh]

...so I read the English version of Josty's article...
Suffice to say, "Oh shit." I mean we, as a human race, should be concerned about this, I think one of the first instances of this happening was the rolling black-outs California suffered years ago. I read page 1 of this thread, I'm going to read 2 tomoz, I'm going to bed atm so I'm not about to read it now...5:52 in the morning here

No, actually those rolling blackout were cause by a company named Enron which was doing a very heavvy accounting fraud at the time and needed to cever the cash that they were claiming to have on their statements. So to do that, they made fake blackouts in the California region so that someone will pay them to fix the problem while they took the energy from California at a lower price and exported it to other states where it could be sold for more.

It's quite a famous case, did a project on the company for my accounting course this semester. But they were caught with the fraud, and many people lost their life savings because of them, most of their management went to jail and had to pay settlements.

 

[Cruzz563]

Sorry for the near month bump, but I came across an article that's a good addition to the one that spawned this thread

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/309/5731/101

And do you really believe it was Enron causing those black outs? Or do you believe that Enron was just a cover up for the real conspiracy, black hats.