Reply #8: Possible [View All]

(Just a note - this post is actually coming from a geology grad student).

Mr. Frum here presents 1 possibility for what could happen in the future with regards to energy production, but it is in fact a highly unlikely one.

He is correct in his economics, first of all. Right now the price of oil is going up, and to a first approximation, I see no reason for it to stop going up until it reaches a level where the additional cost can fund another source of energy.

What Mr. Frum is asserting is that because of this new funding, it will become possible for the world to economically afford to switch to a different source of power. You'll note; he does not say what source of power he thinsk is the most likely, and there's a reason for that.

As oil keeps going up, it is eventually going to reach a point where other technologies, such as wind, solar, nuclear, and oil generated from coal, will be more cost-effective than oil due to the high demand for oil.

The thing Mr. Frum fails to notice, however, is this; each and every single one of the potential replacements for oil has huge inherent problems to it.

If the cost of oil keeps going up, it will eventually become cost effective to take coal, process that into oil, and use that to replace the oil. However, this process has several huge downsides. First, it is much more expensive than just pumping oil out of the ground. Second, it is far more polluting than either burning coal or burning oil. Third, it would burn through the entire world's supply of coal in roughly 50 years. Oil shale has all of these same problems.

Wind and solar are fine, but there is an upper limit to what they can do at this point - if the technology to make these energy forms more efficient and available to everyone doesn't come online until 2050, then they won't help with the oil crunch - they'll be too late.

Nuclear power also has risks - terrorism associated with it, the limited supplies of uranium, and what to do with the waste all come to mind.

Finally, there's the other options - things like fusion. What Mr. Frum ignores in his piece is that there is a huge cost associated with developing any of these technologies - yes, at some point it may be economically feasible to change over to any of these techonologies at some point, here is the major question; how expensive does oil have to get before one of those other technologies comes on line? Also associated with that question is this one; how much damage will that do to the world economies?

At some point, it does become more cost-effective to move from oil to another form of power, but what happens if until 2100, the only things we can do are burn more coal as a stop-gap solution, and then it costs $100+ to produce the equivalent of 1 barrel of oil today?

This would be an absolute economic disaster.