I’m just wondering what Large Source of Energy Us Humans will have developed in time to replace The Free Oil or Coal in the Ground? Faith indicates the oil will last as in Hannaka. Is Man’s Believing Faith going to keep him from an Animal Beast Battle over it’s Free Food(Oil).
The lands where most of the Oil is are separate Countries which are in possession of the Oil and will the Beast in Man fight for it or Will We all learn to Share it? We’re seeing now what happens to countries that don’t have this Resource, it’s crippling. There was the idea of a New World Order and even the United Nations are We to Have Faith in them to calm The Beast in Us?
One consequence of the war(s) that affect the prices of oil is that there is growing interest to switch to alternative energy sources. My guestimate is that the use of oil as an energy source will decline within the next two decades in most regions of the world.
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Free!? You wish.
You’re probably being duped by big oil or big coal propaganda. There is no such thing as a free energy source. But some come with lower costs than others. And both oil and coal have their seasons of competitiveness in certain times and contexts. But you may have noticed we’re in another snarl of war in the Middle East now again. America is just stupid that way. Oil is a lot of things, but ‘free’ is definitely not one of them. Even the oil under the soil here. Anybody telling you otherwise is selling you something.
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It is a little scary to see how far behind the curve we are in the USA regarding renewable energy. And getting further behind every day. The silver lining of higher energy prices is the driving towards renewable energy, in line with what Merv said. China is now the leader in electric vehicles worldwide.
From a spiritual viewpoint, it is important for us to care for creation, not only for the love of those who follow us, but also as God’s first task for man was to care for the garden.
Certainly, new technology will help. Geothermal energy has great promise, and better solar panels will help. I would like to see urban areas use solar panels on building roofs, parking lot and garage covers, etc.
It is sort of interesting to think that whether geothermal, solar, or petrochemical either biofuel or from oil reserves, all of our energy ultimately is derived from nuclear sources.
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“Free”? That concept denies reality. There’s nothing free about resources that are expensive to extract and result in environmental issues just from that extraction.
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I read of a proposal to roof over all freeway interchanges with solar: it would provide energy plus make those interchanges safer in inclement weather.
Another interesting one was to suspend solar panel arrays between tall buildings in cities in places where they would reduce the vertical blasts of wind that can happen among tall buildings.
Personally I favor laws that would exempt solar installations over parking and buildings from property taxes for the first ten years after they start contributing power.
Yes this all sounds good but Man wants to invest in Artificial Intelligence which uses a lot of Energy. He doesn’t have the intelligence to realize We need to act now on alternative Energy and use what oil is left to help work on that.
The law of scarcity applies massively here. I keep hearing people push this theory on social media that oil is so abundant that it is literally “shooting from the ground” simply because of how much it is, but evil man Rockefeller came up with the term “fossil fuels” to make us seem scarce. People don’t realize that the ground underneath them isn’t really infinite; we have a single planet with limited resources. That oil is going to run out in a few decades, and our coal within two centuries. It will take millions of years to replenish.
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I also hear people say about us being in 1984 or The Hunger Games or some other dystopian media. However, authoritarian regimes and AI aside, the most dystopian thing in our society today is social media. I cannot tell you how crazy I felt looking at these theories. For some reason, conspiracy theorists seem to latch onto a few concepts to constantly point back towards as the foundation of all other evil. My fellow 1984 readers are probably familiar with the “5 minutes hate,” where the Party points toward a particular person that everyone needs to rage about. Maybe you are familiar with Animal Farm, where Napoleon blames everything on Snowflake for going wrong. I feel like I’m staring down one of these dystopian societies every time I see these theories.
What does this have to do with oil? As I mentioned prior, people seem to want to believe that (1) global warming and climate change is a scam and that (2) oil is basically produced in abundance from the Earth the same way that trees produce oxygen in abundance. I’ve heard theory after theory about “this warming is just a cycle” or that “they tricked us before by saying we were heading for an ice age” or that “there was more carbon dioxide during the Jurassic period and life didn’t die” and so on and so forth. Thus, we can disregard every warning label oil has and keep on letting it flow! I think in the far right side of political commentary, there is this very staunch idea that things cannot change at all: America must continue isolationist tradition, the government must be kept small, and we cannot switch to “scam” forms of energy. I’m not saying that you, @LikeHim come from this area of thought, but I know that many of these ideas of oil being a limitless energy source from God usually derive from this camp.
My moral of the story? In Genesis, God made Man not to be a subjugator of Creation but as a caretaker. God also made it clear that humans had limits, in that we could eat of any tree but the tree of knowledge and of life. God didn’t give us infinite resources; we have a planet with a limited volume and limited atmosphere. However, this doesn’t mean that God screwed us over; resources cycle on this planet, some (like oil) more slowly than others. If we are existing in a way that requires the cycles that God hath established to move faster than they currently move, then we are the problem, not God.
Also, if we are focusing on oil as the most critical property of any intelligent species to maintain an advanced and prosperous society, then we are already limiting ourselves. People during the Industrial Revolution believed that God would give them unlimited land to expand to and bottomless raw materials to work with. I’m sure early colonists believed that the whales and their sweet, sweet oil wouldn’t become endangered either. The trappers that came as early settlers sure seemed to think that the beavers wouldn’t run out. Settlers came in the first place because of the mounds of gold to be found here. Humans have always believed that the resources that they used would never run out, because why would God not satisfy our needs? Yet, we fail to recognize that we aren’t satisfying our needs in sustainable ways; if you get a single paycheck at the start of every month but blow through it the first week, what right do you have to complain about needs being met? Indeed, God has given us everything we will ever need to be successful. Oil has gotten us far but with breakthroughs in energy production and efficiency, oil is no longer needed for survival. If it was, all planned Moon and Mars colonies would be doomed to fail simply because of their lack of oil access.
As for what energy could replace oil, we need only look upwards at the giant ball of hydrogen and helium that already inputs enough energy into our ecosystems to allow planets to create energy. Indeed, the Sun emits so much energy that Earth is hit with the equivalent of our entire yearly usage in a day worth of radiation. So, solar panels aren’t a bad idea. This solar radiation also heats the atmosphere, so wind wouldn’t be bad either. Of course, these sources have their limits and can cause more damage than oil if used incorrectly. Geothermal is promising because our planet is still warm underneath (basically the Sun but closer and less hot). Nuclear is powerful but, like oil, there is only so much uranium on Earth. Perhaps the most promising is fission technology, that could fuse hydrogen into helium to create energy much the same way the Sun does it.
I apologize if this came off as hostile. I’m in no means trying to hurt anyone’s feelings on this thread (and, truth be told, I used to be in the “infinite oil” camp before seeing the true fragility of our planet). However, I will not hinder my words against the wider web that continues to push these narratives that aren’t going to help our society. So, @LikeHim , although God did give us plenty of free oil, it (like land available for development) is limited, and thus isn’t something we should squander. If, despite all the technological advances and progress we have made over the centuries, our society literally cannot survive without oil, then the problems lies with ourselves and not God. God didn’t give us infinite resources, because we need to be grateful with what we got. What God did give us in plenty is a great intellect; we can and have found ways to power our creations without oil, so the true question isn’t whether oil will last forever, but rather can humans learn to cooperate and adapt together. I think one of those questions is one that God would rather have us asking, and thus why oil, not cooperation, is truly limited.
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See? I’m glad some people are thinking of practical places to put solar panels, rather than chopping down wide swaths of forest to put fields of solar panels.
A great use of marginal to crappy farm land that has already been cleared and given up on. Every flat roof and parking lot could be covered with a lot of benefits besides the solar energy.
Think outside the box you’ve been provided.
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Some research projects are developing structures and coatings that would turn buildings into solar panels - no need for separate panels. It may still take many years before there are economically profitable and sturdy solutions available but that seems to be one way to turn buildings into units that can produce much of the electricity they need.
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Which, perhaps ironically, includes us humans since we, too, are part of nature/Creation. That’s really the point of the story when God brings the animals to Adam but no suitable helper is found: we are also animals, so among the rest of the animals wasn’t a ridiculous place to look! So part of the mandate of caring for Creation is a mandate to care for each other – and that means through all our institutions, not just the church and individuals.
While counting ‘greeds’ as needs, something that continues today.
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Not to mention that we likely evolved from said animals. Our species is acting like a teenager that knows better than its metaphorical evolutionary parents.
Pretty soon the fight(s) over oil will be sidelined by all the fights over water. 
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Unless we actually achieve fusion power, which could desalinate seawater as a byproduct of producing power. Of course then there’s the question of what to do with the brine.
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They engineered bacteria to eat oil after an oil api. Perhaps we could hit two birds with one stone by creating a bacteria that can break down the brine by using carbon as fuel, maybe like a type of algae.
Brine is usually piped offshore where it can be quickly diluted without too much environmental effect. One problem is that it adds to the expense, and in Corpus Christi, they have proposed dumping it in the bay system, which would be awful from an environmental standpoint. Even offshore, I suspect it would create a relative dead area where the brine settles to bottom.
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Pickling?
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Brine is basically highly-concentrated sea salt – think of taking a cup of salt and adding just enough water so you can pour it. That’s strong enough salt to kill all bacteria but perhaps a few extremophile species, and they don’t break it down, they just tolerate it. And it’s dense enough that if dumped in the ocean it doesn’t just dissolve, it behaves more like some sort of lava flow.
Weird stuff, and deadly. It’s one reason the Gates Foundation has proposed that cities recycle their water.
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