We will use all the fuel in the end

[spot5050]

We won't stop until we have consumed all the coal, oil and gas.

You can't conserve hydrocarbon fuels unless you bury a sack of coal in your garden.

[Tanada]

Unfortunately I think you are correct. Even if our current culture collapses too many people know about fossil fuels for them not to be exploited as time goes past. Maybe some of the hard to get stuff would fall out of reach for a while in a cultural collapse, but a fuel like Coal would be exploited even for cook stoves if it was accessible easier than firewood.

[pstarr]

I don't believe that is true. There is, and there will always be billions of barrels of oil too expensive to exploit. Stuff that is too deep, remote, or poor quality. This is especially true with gas, and is why so-called 'stranded gas' has always been flared off. And will continue to be.

[pstarr]

Coal would be exploited even for cook stoves if it was accessible easier than firewood.

If you live by an tired, picked-over, legacy coal seam. The rest, the 'accessible' coal, is long gone. long gone. Hence the monster trucks and giant earthmovers to dig out the rest. these in turn depend on oil/diesel.

[spot5050]

There is, and there will always be billions of barrels of oil too expensive to exploit

True. They will stay down there.

[Ferretlover]

We will use all the fuel, that we can get to, in the end

Fixed that for you.

[Wootan]

Ferretlover has it right, we will use all oil/gas/coal that is commersially available.

Which of course will make plans to reduce worldwide CO2-emmissions a joke. Taxing CO2-emmissions will end up as that: A fiscal burden without any effect to mitigate global warming.

[pstarr]

Ferretlover has it right, we will use all oil/gas/coal that is commersially available.

Which of course will make plans to reduce worldwide CO2-emmissions a joke. Taxing CO2-emmissions will end up as that: A fiscal burden without any effect to mitigate global warming.

I don''t see where your pulled your conclusion from? While you agree certain fuels are too expensive because they are hard to get, you don't believe other fuels are too expensive because of taxes? How about the Europeans?

[Revi]

We'll try to burn everything up, but it will be a futile exercise in the end. Once it becomes more expensive to get the oil than what what we get out it will be over. Not that far away now.

[Wootan]

pstarr, you're right, it is just the conclusion, and I pulled it from common sense. It is almost tautological as well. Gas taxes in Europe are very high, which might reduce demand from discretionary driving. That will lower global prices slightly, and stimulate driving elsewhere. The Chindians will gladly consume every drop saved in Europe. They sell 4.000.000 new cars in China every year. Net result is more revenue to broke European countries, more happy motoring in Asia.

[pstarr]

pstarr, you're right, it is just the conclusion, and I pulled it from common sense. It is almost tautological as well. Gas taxes in Europe are very high, which might reduce demand from discretionary driving. That will lower global prices slightly, and stimulate driving elsewhere. The Chindians will gladly consume every drop saved in Europe. They sell 4.000.000 new cars in China every year. Net result is more revenue to broke European countries, more happy motoring in Asia.

Yes. Gas taxes are high in europe and has thus reduced demand for discretionary driving. It also increased demand for alternative forms of transit.But your conclusion that lower gases prices elsewhere will stimulate driving elsewhere isn't necessarily true. Elsewhere may be populated by people less in love with cars and more enthralled with pubic transportation.

[Wootan]

I think you have to accept that gas (diesel to a lesser degree) has a measure of price-elasticity. Low prices makes for increased consumption. (The price-elasticity of both gas and diesel is interesting, I would guess that you have discussed it on PO.com many times.)

In addition you have Jevon's paradox "that technological progress that increases the efficiency with which a resource is used, tends to increase (rather than decrease) the rate of consumption of that resource". (Wiki) More fuel-efficient cars will NOT make the remaining oil last longer.

But even so, higher taxes in Europe will only make a delay in oil consumption, only flatten the curve slightly. We will still use all the fuel. In any foreseeable future, the fire-brigade will not arrive on bicycles.

[Tanada]

Coal would be exploited even for cook stoves if it was accessible easier than firewood.

If you live by an tired, picked-over, legacy coal seam. The rest, the 'accessible' coal, is long gone. long gone. Hence the monster trucks and giant earth movers to dig out the rest. these in turn depend on oil/diesel.

Not necessarily true. The giant skip loaders and dump trucks are used because it is cheaper to blow a mountain up or strip mine a valley than it is to hand dig your way into the seems and haul it out one cart load at a time. I am talking about the scenario where fuel is precious and the wage slaves or outright enslaved persons are sent digging into the earth with picks and shovels under very hazardous conditions to provide fuel for the upper management and political administrators... Think Sector 12 in The Hunger Games, not mountaintop removal in 2012.

[spot5050]

Wow Tanada, you have an agenda. I asked "We will use all the fuel in the end?"

You get into this;

I am talking about the scenario where fuel is precious and the wage slaves or outright enslaved persons are sent digging into the earth with picks and shovels under very hazardous conditions to provide fuel for the upper management and political administrators... Think Sector 12 in The Hunger Games, not mountaintop removal in 2012."

[pstarr]

Wow Tanada, you have an agenda. I asked "We will use all the fuel in the end?"

You get into this;

I am talking about the scenario where fuel is precious and the wage slaves or outright enslaved persons are sent digging into the earth with picks and shovels under very hazardous conditions to provide fuel for the upper management and political administrators... Think Sector 12 in The Hunger Games, not mountaintop removal in 2012."

It's not an agenda, just Hollywood's version of reality. It's a hell of a lot smarter then the version they are hallucinating in Kansas for instance.

[Plantagenet]

If our society completely collapses it is unlikely to rise again, because all the good deposits of near surface oil and minerals have been totally used up. There is so little left high grade mineral ore left on this planet that people are seriously considering mining asteroids.



We'd better keep this society going, because there is no way we can start over with picks and shovels and find enough stuff to build another advanced industrial society up from scratch.

[spot5050]

There is so little left on this planet that people are seriously considering mining asteroids.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17827347

[scas]

Peoples beliefs dictate reality.

If everyone agrees that we will burn all the fuel, we will probably end up collapsed in a 6+ degree anomaly world.

[Tanada]

If our society completely collapses it is unlikely to rise again, because all the good deposits of near surface oil and minerals have been totally used up. There is so little left high grade mineral ore left on this planet that people are seriously considering mining asteroids.

We'd better keep this society going, because there is no way we can start over with picks and shovels and find enough stuff to build another advanced industrial society up from scratch.

A) you need more historical perspective, every culture collapses sooner or later and resets to zero or hand labor agriculture.

B) the Mega corporations only exploit deposits big enough for them to make a massive profit on to pay for all those skip loaders and huge dump trucks. Thousands or tens of thousands of small deposits that are of the type mankind mined by hand exist scattered far and wide because they are 'too small to be economic'. Almost all of those will still be around to be exploited at a later date. Even all the old coal mines that were hand dug in the past with the room and pillar method, then abandoned still have half their coal in the ground. Mining into them from a different direction using different techniques just isn't economical in the massive machine era, but set things at a low pace and take away the machines and Voila suddenly they are valuable to the local population again.

[pstarr]

tanada you are describing a simple agrarian culture, Kunstler's 'World Made by Hand' of a few million people. Not a crowed planet of 7 billions. billions must die to live off the scraps we have left.