QUOTE (wittyfox @ Sep 03 2007, 07:13 PM) The option I am forced to think of first is to just invade the weak countries taking them over thereby having access to as much crude oil as you want. But thats alittle rude and bloody and may last for years. Also, who says one country hasn't already tried that.......but you said no conspiracy theories so Ill leave that alone. The only decent bloodless option seems to decrease the demand by putting a greater demand on a new means of fuel. There by opening the problem of placing too much demand on another supply and even more years of bitching, but at least gas prices would be down. If my car runs on gas or corn or vegetable oil, I could care less. The speed limits in America are too low as is, so I doubt I will notice.
You have to keep in mind the unbelievable cost of war. Of course I don't mean human life or any of that boring stuff
but Oil. I don't have the figures in front of me but it takes an unimaginable amount of fuel to supply an army much less an active one. So for the invasion to actually yield a profit (fuel wise) it would have to be a full out, 'fire at will' invasion wiping out everything in the area we intend to conquer. The longer you draw it out the more fuel you'll need to confiscate to be able to say "yes, it was a success and it was worth all the fuel we burned up."
The problem with that is we still will have not solved the problem that we don't have an unlimited supply of oil. Worse yet, if only one country has all the oil then it will create animosity with the other nations, the upshot of which is another world war; remember how fun those are? Moreover, since the other nations will have much less than the targeted country you not only have enemies, but fanatical enemies with nothing to lose.
The key to developing a renewable fuel source is making it more profitable than oil, if we do that then the oil companies will naturally move over to developing this new source. Ethanol is the more famous of these “magical†sources of fuel, but one reservation I have revolves around the “Freon-Phenomena.†I may have the wrong spelling but I’m referring to the chemical compound developed during the 50s, I believe, that was a perfect chemical for refrigeration. The best thing about this chemical was that it was completely harmless, you could drink the stuff and nothing would ever happen to you. Because of this people were very careless with it, but we were so mystified at the usefulness and the harmless nature of the chemical we failed to do a full analysis of its impact. What did we get many years later? An Ozone Hole. This is my worry with Ethanol, we’re so excited that we can grow this stuff we may just do the exact same thing and not fully analyze all possible situations. Not to mention that the production AND use produces carbon dioxide, something we’re supposed to be cutting down on.
My idea is that instead of searching for this fuel source on this planet, look to outer space. All these planets, even just in our solar system, offer many different environments. With proper scientific development it is not a far fetched idea that there will either be more fuel on these planets or chemical compounds available to make another fuel source. At the very least if we can colonize another planet we can taken some of the pressure off this planet, people wise.
