{"id":16,"date":"2013-02-25T05:00:53","date_gmt":"2013-02-25T09:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wfredk.com\/blog\/?p=16"},"modified":"2014-07-11T02:24:25","modified_gmt":"2014-07-11T06:24:25","slug":"its-time-now-to-avert-the-oil-and-energy-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wfredk.com\/blog\/2013022505\/its-time-now-to-avert-the-oil-and-energy-crisis","title":{"rendered":"It’s time *now* to avert the oil and energy crisis!"},"content":{"rendered":"

We are going to run out of oil.\u00a0 Before that happens, we are going to run out of cheap energy.\u00a0 When that happens, there’s going to be starvation, civil unrest, warfare and the collapse of civilization – maybe even the end of humanity if the wars get too far out of hand.<\/p>\n

This isn’t a disaster that’s just going to fall on America, or only on the industrialized parts of the world:\u00a0 This is going to affect every human being on the planet, except perhaps jungle dwellers and aborigines who are largely independent of civilization.\u00a0 If the downfall of civilization results in nuclear warfare, however, even those hapless tribes will not be unscathed.<\/p>\n

When is this horrible disaster going to befall us?\u00a0 That’s hard to say because the estimates of how much oil is left are just that – estimates – and the numbers being touted by various groups vary wildly.\u00a0 The most optimistic predictions tell us there are reserves for 150 years, pessimists predict a tenth of that time.\u00a0 In any case, as we get closer to the bottom of the barrel, the cost of retrieving the oil is going to skyrocket which will signal the beginning of the end.\u00a0 Many of the projections assume that oil consumption is going to level out, or even decline.\u00a0 Neither of those conditions is going to occur:\u00a0 More people are using more oil every day, and as long as there is oil available, that’s not going to change.<\/p>\n

Modern civilization is totally dependent on oil:\u00a0 Huge amounts are burned up every day in our transportation systems, to provide heat, and to generate electricity.\u00a0 In addition, nearly everything made out of plastic started out as oil.\u00a0 Plastic is being used for everything – containers, plumbing, vinyl siding, cell phones, car bodies, etc., etc.\u00a0 I would be very surprised to meet anyone living in the civilized world who didn’t own anything<\/em> made of plastic – and most of us have lots<\/em> of things that are.\u00a0 As we raise the standard of living for everyone on the planet, the demand for more plastic – and more oil for fuel – is just going to go up.<\/p>\n

Eventually the current demand for oil and oil products is going to exceed the total production capacity.\u00a0 When that happens, civilization will start to collapse.<\/p>\n

There is a way to avert this disaster – but the window of opportunity is rapidly passing by.\u00a0 The death of civilization can<\/em> be avoided, but only by developing a replacement energy supply.\u00a0 Doing so is going to take a tremendous investment of effort, and will require a substantial amount of time – and energy.\u00a0 If we wait too long, there won’t be enough time left to build a replacement energy source.<\/p>\n

Fossil fuels – oil, coal, gas – have stored the Sun’s energy that fell on the Earth in the past.\u00a0 Over the course of the last one hundred fifty years we have burned through a large portion of the stored solar energy from millions of years gone by.<\/p>\n

The only feasible energy source that can serve as a replacement for oil is direct collection of solar power.\u00a0 Trying to collect solar power at the Earth’s surface to run all of our modern civilization, however, is not practical:\u00a0 The Sun is overhead only part of a day, and may be obscured by clouds in the air or snow on the ground.\u00a0 Solar collectors take up a lot of space, and the power consumed by a city far exceeds the amount of solar power falling directly on it.<\/p>\n

Because of the problems with trying to collect it on the ground, solar power is generally ruled out as a viable replacement for oil power.\u00a0 It is those very problems that make it imperative for us to build a network of solar power satellites in orbit, where the Sun is always shining, and beam the power to the ground.\u00a0 Only then can we hope to have enough area in the collectors to be able to gather all of the energy needed to support a power-hungry civilization and make it cheaply available.<\/p>\n

Building a constellation of solar power satellites is going to require a tremendous<\/strong><\/em> investment, and it’s not going to happen overnight.\u00a0 We must get started NOW<\/strong><\/em>, however, or the end of civilization predicted above will<\/em> befall us.<\/p>\n

I’ve started Space Power Now!<\/strong><\/a> as a vehicle for raising public awareness of the critical nature of the energy crisis looming in the near future, and how solar power delivered from satellites in Earth orbit is the only reasonable long-term solution.\u00a0 Please, visit the site, participate, and let’s make it happen!<\/em> The future of humanity depends on it!<\/p>\n

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We are going to run out of oil.\u00a0 Before that happens, we are going to run out of cheap energy.\u00a0 When that happens, there’s going to be starvation, civil unrest, warfare and the collapse of civilization – maybe even the end of humanity if the wars get too far out of hand. This isn’t a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,4,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-call-to-action","category-opinions","category-space-ted"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wfredk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wfredk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wfredk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wfredk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wfredk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/wfredk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60,"href":"https:\/\/wfredk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions\/60"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wfredk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wfredk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wfredk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}