With only 20yr of commercial oil left, does it matter who the next 2 Presidents are?

[CK_John]

Of course none of the candidates will tell us what they plan on doing about it.

Of course some will want to quibble over the number of yrs left, but everyone who can add 2 and 2 knows that India and China will need 75% of existing oil sources to maintain its growth rate and both are a lot closer to the Saudi oil fields than we are.

If you want links, forgetaboutit! No FOIA is going to give you a time-line.

[Uncle Joe]

1. I believe it does matter, there is still enough oil in the ground to

destroy life as we know it if you want to drill, pump and burn all of it.

From current trends I believe a Democratic President will try a slow wean away from fossil fuels while a Republican one will embrace the drilling and exploitation with absolutely no regard to the consequences.

The Democratic outcome may be too little, too late but the Republican scenario will be humanity taking a half gainer in to an empty concrete pool.

Thanks for the thread, CK_John.

[FarCenter]

8. There's not enough oil in the ground that can be extracted economically

Sure, there are outlandish projections of "oil" reserves. But lots of those oils are bitumen, tar sands, oil-bearing shales, and "oil shale" containing kerogen, which is not actually an oil.

The amount of energy, material, and cost to get barrels out keeps going up, and economies will cut back sharply on consumption as the prices rise.

[Uncle Joe]

9. Actually I don't believe we have to drill, pump and burn all of it to reach the premise of my post

regarding the threat against life as we know it, because other environmental tipping points, ie: the thawing and release of methane deposits, beyond our control will take over long before we burn all the economically available oil.

[Speck Tater]

2. Regardless of who is elected...

civilization is pretty much doomed, and the human race itself may be doomed to extinction, (although that is less likely). The world of the future will be shaped by the laws of physics, not by the politics of mere humans. Campaigns, elections, candidate debates, Sunday talks shows, are not even rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, but rather just idle talk about how those deck chairs might be arranged, even though none of them ever will be.

[CK_John]

3. So little time to change the world. nt

[Odin2005]

4. If you think we are doomed then why arn't you jumping off a bridge?

Why keep living if you think it's just going to get worse?

Doomers annoy me. Those that think there is no replacement for oil belong in the same category as the people that thought airplanes were impossible, or spaceflight was impossible, or are like that IBM guy who thought computers would never get smaller than a small room.

[Speck Tater]

5. I'm not jumping off the bridge because I'm watching the show.

A Zen parable:

A man walking across a field encounters a tiger. He fled, the tiger chasing after him. Coming to a cliff, he caught hold of a wild vine and swung himself over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Terrified, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger had come, waiting to eat him. Two mice, one white and one black, little by little began to gnaw away at the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine in one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted!

[Strelnikov_]

7. Whats a Doomer? n/t

[scheming daemons]

6. Yes... because one party (Democrats) is interested in expanding other sources of energy

..and the other party is in bed with big Oil.