i always wonder why we are so obsessed with oil. Yes i understand that is powers our entire civilization pretty much but do we reallllyyy need it? We know now that we are going to run out of oil eventually, so it is worth literally going to war over it? i don't think so.

What i want to ask the ATS community follows:

If someone came on the news tomorrow and said we have 10 years of oil left, what would we do?

I think panic sets in at first, the price skyrockets and what not, but we aren't just going to stop functioning, we have other sources of power readily available. Perhaps the hydrogen car will begin to make it's large steps forward, as it is clean, relatively simple to make, and the technology is available, we just need the infrastructure to support it. Also, look at our boys at Porsche, they've created an electric car that is so potent as a sports car that a driver could easily forget that it lacks a loud and inefficient engine.

In short, i think we'll survive, after all humanity relishes challenges. But i wanna know your opinions; shoot.

Actually, the entire world survives on oil. Our world would collapse without it. "Everything" is made from oil or uses oil to make it. All plastics need oil. All cars need oil but not to just make it run but to "make" it. Did you know that a tire has 7 gallons of oil in it? Just "one" tire. So everytime a person buys a tire, they are contributing to the oil market. Consider food. How much oil is used to get a piece of broccoli to you? You have the oil to till the land, to get the employees to the land in the first place, the oil to package the broccoli, to get it to the stores... the list goes on and on. We use so much oil to produce our food that every person consumes 10 calories of hydrocarbon energy per food that they eat.

If we stopped using oil, we wouldn't have any food.

Consider electricity. Electricity is "NOT" a source. It is dervied from another source (oil) to produce it. So we would lose electricity as well.

Our government is well aware of a possible shortage. So here is an idea for you:

Our government needs the oil to keep control. They "need the oil to make money. They want to drill in the Arctic but they cannot because the ice caps do not permit them too. For example, if you put an oil rig in one location, the ice will "move" the rig to another location. So, in order to drill, you must melt the ice caps.

Does "An Inconvenient Truth" ring a bell right now? The government cannot just go in and melt ice caps. People worldwide would revolt. So they "make" it happen by other means. They tell us that "global warming" is causing the ice caps to melt. Really? Because most scientists worldwide do not believe in global warming. Gore was recently sued by over 30,000 scientists for the lies that he told in his film.

So what did they do to make it happen? They cause an oil spill in the gulf (BP) to alter weather patterns via the gulf stream. Benjamin Franklin always said that if you destroy the gulf stream, you destroy the world. This, in turn, raises the earths temperature and causes extreme weather. States are drained financially because they are forced to deal with emergencies. "Everybody" is too busy dealing with tsunamis and tornadoes to see whats really going on...

Recently, world leaders met in Greenland to discuss drilling in the Arctic where the melting of the ice caps has already occurred. Really????

I dont know about you but this is all starting to make sense to me now...

My concern is this... once they start drilling they cannot stop so they will always need to keep the earth warm. So what other planned catastrophes do they have in store for us?

Are "you" ready?

BTW.... oil is a necessary component of electric cars. You need oil to make the car itself and the tires. You also need oil to produce electricity. So don't fool yourselves.

I work for a company that is on it's way down. The numbers say it, not my opinion. The reason for this is that there seems to be an over abundance of management who think all the little details will somehow magically work themselves out and we end up with mess after mess. You see, there are no convenient magic solutions. It comes down to hard numbers and dealing with reality.

The human population ran at the same level for many many years. The energy source they depended on was called "bio mass" which meant our energy (people, animals moving stuff) came mostly from food. Yeah there was fire for boilers etc but I'm trying to make a point here. It takes energy to support life. So since we relied on bio mass our population stayed roughly the same for a very long time. Then, they discovered coal. Whoot! The number of bipedal hairless simians doubled. You see, when coal burned it generated more energy than a log of wood would so more work could be done. The more food could be produced, etc. You've seen the movies where the old steam locomotive goes chugging along. Imagine if that train had to run on prairie grass. It's about the amount of energy produced by a certain volume. The amount of prairie grass to launch the space shuttle into orbit would be so much in size and weight that it simply could not be done.

Then came oil. Now much much more work could be done per volume. Man had never seen anything like it. And you know what? The population of hairless bipedal simians grew much much much higher. Food started to come from different regions, even different countries. Knowledge was exchange quicker. Products derived from petroleum became the catalyst for EVERYTHING you now take for granted. Including nearly every aspect of the computer you are using to read this.

I don't know if you've looked at satellite images lately but just about every inch of farm-able land is being farmed. Many mountain ranges look like they have mange (oil powered vehicles doing that) because trees are being mowed down at an incredible rate. The energy that this has been done with was from things God made. Not what man made. We are in deep doo doo... We have "nothing" to take from the earth to replace this. Just about every oil industry site I've been to over the years has convinced me we are hosed and in for something very unpleasant.

Remember what I said about the number of people growing with the better energy source? Guess what happens when it goes away? The number of people it supported has to go away also. The problems you think might be close down the road have already started. They are trying to "take" the remaining good supplies of proven and "known" oil reserves. Ever wonder why BP wasn't punished for polluting the gulf? It's because the outcome of not having the oil is known so you don't want people to stop drilling no matter how risky it is.

Ethanol is NOT a solution. Neither is hydrogen. I know this from having read up. It takes more energy to make this stuff than it produces. If anything it is a political hand job designed to keep people from thinking about hard facts. If they thought about facts they'd be in a panic trying to learn how to grow their own food and can it. Books on animal husbandry would be flying off the shelf.

There is no magic wand of salvation from this. There is only the facts.

Oh! Bush said we were going to Mars. Remember that? Many bipedal hairless simians got excited and had good feelings towards him. If they would have thought for a second they would have realized they were getting a mental hand job. Wake up..!

Well there are other technology's that we know but I would say they are far from readily available and I'm not sure 10 years would be enough time to prepare industry to switch to something totally different. However we have far more than 10 years left so that's not an issue.

Should we go to war over it? Absolutely yes. Oil is so vital to our economy and way of life that we should never entrust something we rely on that heavily to somebody else completely. Why would we ever give someone that much power to hold over our heads, that would just be irresponsible. If we weren't interceding in the oil rich countries and maintaining an influence what's to stop them from getting together and completely cutting us off just cause they get mad at us?

What if China get's a hair up it's butt and decides they want to invade America. They may talk to all the foreign oil suppliers to the U.S. and say quit selling them oil. Than our economy crashes and our military doesn't run and China takes over. Sorry the oil's in your country guys but we should never take our hand out of the cookie jar so to speak.

Besides it was an oil company that discovered oil in Saudi Arabia and found the local tribe leader and bought the rights to it thus creating that kingdom so in a way that empire over there exists because of us.