Peak oil is defined as the global midpoint of oil production. There is no disputing that peak oil will happen sometime in the future, it is a verifiable geological fact. Some believe that we are at or have recently past the peak.



Our economy is almost entirely dependent on oil. In some way or another, almost everything (if not everything) uses oil to be manufactures, transported, grown, etc.

Now, people always say "create energy", but actually they mean use/transform energy. Energy can't be created, the laws of thermodynamics state this and has been proven a million times over.

Entropy is the measure of disorder within a physical system. All physical system ultimately evolve toward higher disorder (heat energy etc.). For example, it's easy to break something such as hurling a rock at a window, but now try fixing that window (lower entropy). You will end up with a fixed window, yes, but in the end, combining the energy required to fix the window you have ended up with higher entropy. This is just how the universe works.

The Earth is often referred to as a "closed system" and will eventually evolve toward higher and higher disorder. For example our civilization right now is very orderly in terms of our technology and just the way we do things. But it required intense effort (energy) to get to where we are now. To maintain this civilization, we will have to use increasing amounts of energy otherwise, nature will inevitably balance things out for us and it will be for the worse.

However, the Earth is actually an open system, it's open to the universe and other cosmic processes as well as the sun which bombards the Earth with an incredible amount of energy every day. It allows the Earth sustain beautiful, diverse ecosystems but of course, the sun is blowing up millions of fusion bombs all the time and that's an incredible amount of disorder.

Remember this important term: ERoRI - Energy Returns over Energy Invested. Basically what you put in and what you get out. It requires energy to obtain oil, solar power, wind power, geothermal power etc. and to have it ready to be used.

It's very important to remember all of the above...

The most popular reaction is, "Hey we'll find alternatives don't despair." There are a lot of problems with alternatives however.

Hydrogen:

Hydrogen is not found in large packets in nature. First we have to make it, and that requires energy that will have to come from oil. Then we have to have somewhere to store the hydrogen and right now, we have problems doing so. Hydrogen is the smallest element in the universe; it's no surprise that it easily slips out of where it is contained. Our storage techniques are getting better however!

There are fuel cells, it's not a new technology. The reason we haven't built it into millions of cars is because it's expensive and requires platinum. Each fuel cell takes about 20 grams of platinum and we do not have enough of that to make such a transition. The end cost for each FC (currently) is $500,000 dollars. Proponents of the technology claim that they can slash the price 10x in the near future, but to be a viable option it would have to go down 50x.

Wind Turbines:

The biggest problem with wind turbines is land usage. To replace one oil burning plant, it would require 80x+ more land area (taking into account the lifetime of the turbines and the plant). This can have serious negative impacts on the environment especially the bird population. Although one of cleanest energy sources available, residents often complain how noisy they are.

Wind turbines generally have a lifetime of about 30 years. And they require expensive maintenance which may also need oil (machinery). One great thing about turbines is at the end of their term, they can be removed from the ground without damaging the immediate environment.

Also, only areas which have lots of wind are feasible for wind turbines otherwise they end up not giving enough back once it's all said and done.

Solar Power:

Solar power is the cleanest energy source known. The first type we use is "solar thermal" which converts solar energy directly to heat energy. The second type we use is "photoelectric" which converts solar energy directly to electrical energy. And of course, they use a nearly inexhaustible source (the sun).

Solar suffers from similar problems as turbines do. To create sufficient energy, they must cover a large surface area. They are also require constant maintenance since they are made from fragile materials (glass).

Coal:

Yes, 23% of the world's energy comes from coal today and oil can be extracted from it. But then, it is a nonrenewable resource and soon (very soon), we will face "peak coal". Coal is even more polluting than oil so we will just end up destroying the environment and causing nasty global warming or cooling.

Also, to use coal, we would have to make a massive investment to change our factories to run on coal instead of oil, which most of them do now.

Orimulsion:

Orimulsion is in the same situation with coal, except worse. It can replace oil, but it is 3% sulphur and is one of the dirtiest sources of energy we know of. Global warming galore.

Nuclear:

Fission reactors create abundant, clean energy around the world today. But they too have problems. Radioactive waste and be used to create weapons and we have no where to store it. There's also the possibility of a meltdown which has happened before (Chernobyl). To support the US today, we would need 400 nuclear plants.

But wait, fusion power! Right now fusion power is a great alternative, the biggest problem is that the technology doesn't exist yet for people to use.

The fuel for fusion reactors is inexhaustible, they use tritium and deuterium (hydrogen isotopes). Deuterium occurs everywhere in seawater and tritium is made from lithium, a very common metal in Earth's crust.

Fusion works by heating up tritium and deterium together up to 100 million degrees so that they slam together and "fuse" into a highly unstable helium-3 atom which decays into a helium-2 atom and releases a neutron. The problem with this whole process is that we don't have the technology to contain the process and gain enough energy from it to be worth it.

Geothermal:

Geothermal is great because it creates no pollution and is inexhaustible. However, it is only available in special parts in the world and there is little power per vent.

Biomass:

I don't know much about biomass and have already seen 25 page flamewars on forums over it. I can say that biomass is available everywhere, inexhaustible, and the fuels produced from it are efficient. Depending on how it is used, it can either be environmentally friendly, or it can destroy the environment. We will see how this develops.

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Further Reading:

Nine Critical Questions to Ask About Alternative Energy

Crude Awakening

Peak oil debunked

Life after the oil crash

Popular PO site

The oil drum

Long post, congrats if you made it this far.

EDIT: If that pic is too big, I don't know how to resize it.