The Future of Energy

Getting around: Fuel Use of Various Modes of Transportation

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Joules, BTUs, Quads—Let's Call the Whole Thing Off

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The International Energy Agency predicts that oil production will fall at 4.35% in 2009 and to 10% per year by 2030. In the table below is shown the number of installations or power stations required to replace all of the oil consumed and the 6.7% per year by several other energy sources.

Energy source Quantity Replacement (6.7%)
Three Gorges Dams (18 GW each) 200 13
1.65 MW Wind Turbines 1642500 110047
2.1 KW Solar PV installations 4.5625 billion 305687500
500 MW coal-fired electric stations 5200 348
1.1 GW nuclear electric plants 2600 174

A cubic mile of oil vs renewable energy

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The Crash Course: Ready to learn everything you need to know about the economy in the shortest amount of time? Chris Martenson

Dr. Albert Bartlett: Arithmetic, Population and Energy


The end of the world?

  • Cheap, plentiful fossil fuels discovered in the last hundred years (or so) spurred a food bubble, which led to a population bubble.
  • Cheap oil, in other words, created the temporary conditions necessary to support a runaway population explosion that is, without question, unsustainable without cheap energy.
  • But cheap oil is finite. And based on all reasonable accounting, world oil production is already in a state of substantial decline.
  • When the era of cheap oil ends, the food bubble made possible by mechanized agriculture will also end. And that will usher in an era of rapid human depopulation. Long-term, in a post-Peak Oil scenario, most experts expect the planet to only be able to support about one billion people.
  • Those who master the skills of agriculture (and who can protect themselves from the desperate masses leaving the cities) will live and reproduce.
  • Those who deny reality and hope for some government to save them with silly economic stimulus bills will starve and die.

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