Main > Everything Else
Peak oil
Zero_Hour:
--- Quote from: shmokes on March 28, 2005, 05:16:09 pm ---Man (and probably man-made objects) will never leave our solar system. People who think we will have a highly romanticized idea of what the universe is like.
--- End quote ---
In much the same way as some guys in the 13-1400's had a romanticized idea of circumnavigating the world. :P
To think that we have tapped out the potential of human knowledge is at once depressing, and arrogant. Read up on Quantum Physics - much of it largely theoretical, but you have to start somewhere. We continue to push the bounds of human imagination and achievment.
To think that we have done anything more than scratch the surface of "The Nature of the Universe" would be similar to me assesing world population growth by looking out my back window. Our dataset is miniscule.
Mind you, I don't think that intergalactic travel is ever gonna be an option on my vacation itinerary, but to dismiss it as impossible is as silly as thinking we'll have it solved next week.
shmokes:
--- Quote from: shmokes on March 28, 2005, 05:16:09 pm ---And if we ever are able to travel at anything like the speed of light, which is unlikely, it's going to be 1000 years down the road.
--- End quote ---
Hey...I left the possibility open a little bit... :)
Zero_Hour:
Ah indeed you did, must be an optimist at heart. ;D
jbox:
--- Quote ---Well, which one is it? Are we going to destroy the environment with fossil fuels or run out of them? We can't really do both now can we?
--- End quote ---
Irony aside, just to be clear about this - peak oil is not, will not, nor has ever been about the oil running out per se. It is about the fact that getting oil out of the ground is non-trivial, so the supply of oil can only increase at a slow rate regardless of demand.
For normal commodities we don't care, because we'll just buy something else. But we live in the industrial age still (until we can research science VII and build fusion reactors). Thus demand cannot be reduced easily, which means the market price of oil will sky-rocket and cause another depression.
My personal suspicion is that everyone seems to be playing the anti-IP game at the moment. No one wants to foot the bill for researching the tech needed to move from oil, but will be the first to jump up and down screaming at the government that the technology needs to be de-patented for them or society will collapse.
Bones:
--- Quote from: shmokes on March 28, 2005, 07:10:56 pm ---
--- Quote from: shmokes on March 28, 2005, 05:16:09 pm ---And if we ever are able to travel at anything like the speed of light, which is unlikely, it's going to be 1000 years down the road.
--- End quote ---
Hey...I left the possibility open a little bit... :)
--- End quote ---
You need to think outside the circle grasshopper.
Going from "a" to "b" in a straight line may be the shortest distance between 2 points and therefore at first glance be the quickest, but if you can make the line shorter between the two points then speed, fuel and duration of travel is no longer of relevance.
Any alien race commuting between galaxies or solar systems would therefore have mastered the ability to distort the fabric of space surrounding their spaceship.
It's just common sense really.....