Running out of fossil fuels in 30 years
Fossil fuels will run out much sooner than anyone is willing to admit.
If natural gas reserves run out in 2039, (yes, in 30 years. How old will you be?)(How old will your children be?) that will go far toward reducing mankind's carbon releases, with no need for cap-and-trade boondoggles. It will also be a much more immediate problem than the ocean rise around the Maldives during the next 30 years. And affect billions of people worldwide.
It is easy to put together a spreadsheet that starts with the estimated amount of reserves, and then subtracts the amount used each year to find out when the reserves will run out at a constant amount of use. It is only a little harder to make the subtraction into a formula that subtracts an increasing percentage each year. And you can make the percentage factor a variable so you can change it to see what effect different amounts of increase will have on the forecast.
By this estimate, natural gas will run out in 2039, oil will run out in 2068, and coal will run out in 2071.
There are also many issues about whether the estimates of reserves are accurate. We don't really know. Due to political pressures, and OPEC's decision to base the amount of crude that members can sell per year on the amount of estimated reserves, most estimates are state secrets, and the published amounts haven't changed very much since the mid 80s. Also, we can debate whether the use of fossil fuels will diminish as they get more scarce, or will increase. I suspect that when natural gas runs out, there will be more pressure to use more coal as heating fuel, no matter what the cost. And then, there are the historical warnings of resource exhaustion, such as the Club of Rome's "Limits to Growth" in the 1970's that have proven to be false. Fossil fuels are, however different in kind from most of the other resources. We have found more ways to make do with less and less mineral resources, and recycle those we do have. Fossil fuel is used up totally when it is used.
The estimates of fossil fuel reserves worldwide are debatable, but are somewhere near:
Oil: 2,900 billion barrels
Coal: 933 billion tons
Natural Gas: 6,215 trillion cubic feet.
Our current estimated annual use amounts are:
Oil: 27.6 billion barrels
Coal: 5.85 billion tons
Natural Gas: 98.7 trillion cubic feet
If we used fossil fuels at our current rates, this would translate to many years of estimated reserves. But we aren't staying at constant use rates, our rates of energy use increase every year. The world's population is growing, more people buy more cars every year, more people buy more computers every year and our rate of energy use is continually growing. Years ago, Russia's natural gas was of little consequence, but last year when it cut off supplies, Europe started to get very cold. China is building new coal fired power plants at the rate of a new one every two weeks. Google itself is said to use one half of one percent of all the electricity produced in America.
The rates of increase of energy use are about:
Oil:1.7 percent
Coal:2.6 percent
Natural Gas: 3.6 percent
If you set up a spreadsheet using the amounts of estimated reserves, and subtracting the amounts used, and account for the increase in energy use each year, you will get that natural gas will run out in 2039, oil will run out in 2068 or so, and coal will run out in 2071, give or take a couple.
This is a much more imminent and dangerous disaster than any disaster predicted by the global warming mongers. Please work through these figures for yourself, and research these issues at the US DOE Energy Information Agency, the BP Review of World Energy, and worldenergy.org. Wikipedia also has some good discussions. We need to be publicly discussing this.
Regards,
If natural gas reserves run out in 2039, (yes, in 30 years. How old will you be?)(How old will your children be?) that will go far toward reducing mankind's carbon releases, with no need for cap-and-trade boondoggles. It will also be a much more immediate problem than the ocean rise around the Maldives during the next 30 years. And affect billions of people worldwide.
It is easy to put together a spreadsheet that starts with the estimated amount of reserves, and then subtracts the amount used each year to find out when the reserves will run out at a constant amount of use. It is only a little harder to make the subtraction into a formula that subtracts an increasing percentage each year. And you can make the percentage factor a variable so you can change it to see what effect different amounts of increase will have on the forecast.
By this estimate, natural gas will run out in 2039, oil will run out in 2068, and coal will run out in 2071.
There are also many issues about whether the estimates of reserves are accurate. We don't really know. Due to political pressures, and OPEC's decision to base the amount of crude that members can sell per year on the amount of estimated reserves, most estimates are state secrets, and the published amounts haven't changed very much since the mid 80s. Also, we can debate whether the use of fossil fuels will diminish as they get more scarce, or will increase. I suspect that when natural gas runs out, there will be more pressure to use more coal as heating fuel, no matter what the cost. And then, there are the historical warnings of resource exhaustion, such as the Club of Rome's "Limits to Growth" in the 1970's that have proven to be false. Fossil fuels are, however different in kind from most of the other resources. We have found more ways to make do with less and less mineral resources, and recycle those we do have. Fossil fuel is used up totally when it is used.
The estimates of fossil fuel reserves worldwide are debatable, but are somewhere near:
Oil: 2,900 billion barrels
Coal: 933 billion tons
Natural Gas: 6,215 trillion cubic feet.
Our current estimated annual use amounts are:
Oil: 27.6 billion barrels
Coal: 5.85 billion tons
Natural Gas: 98.7 trillion cubic feet
If we used fossil fuels at our current rates, this would translate to many years of estimated reserves. But we aren't staying at constant use rates, our rates of energy use increase every year. The world's population is growing, more people buy more cars every year, more people buy more computers every year and our rate of energy use is continually growing. Years ago, Russia's natural gas was of little consequence, but last year when it cut off supplies, Europe started to get very cold. China is building new coal fired power plants at the rate of a new one every two weeks. Google itself is said to use one half of one percent of all the electricity produced in America.
The rates of increase of energy use are about:
Oil:1.7 percent
Coal:2.6 percent
Natural Gas: 3.6 percent
If you set up a spreadsheet using the amounts of estimated reserves, and subtracting the amounts used, and account for the increase in energy use each year, you will get that natural gas will run out in 2039, oil will run out in 2068 or so, and coal will run out in 2071, give or take a couple.
This is a much more imminent and dangerous disaster than any disaster predicted by the global warming mongers. Please work through these figures for yourself, and research these issues at the US DOE Energy Information Agency, the BP Review of World Energy, and worldenergy.org. Wikipedia also has some good discussions. We need to be publicly discussing this.
Regards,