We use oil because it’s cheap not because it’s the only possible solution. It’s not that we’re going to run out 100% year X, it’s that as economies of scale end priced inherently spike. Gas stations can scale down to 1940’s levels by having most of them close, but giant fuel refineries, pipelines, etc need scale to be worth the maintenance.
Batteries are fine for ocean shipping on a ~50 year timescale, and that basically covers burning fossil fuels. Using it as a feedstock for plastics etc is a non issue for climate change.
> Who is going to pay the equivalent of 50$/gallon when they can use an EV?
If we're going to be arguing for peak oil, let's argue for peak lithium then too. EVs are going to get more and more expensive too as we have to extract from more expensive lithium stores.
> We use oil because it’s cheap not because it’s the only possible solution
For some things sure. Aviation fuel and ship fuel notably don't have any real replacements on the horizon.
From your sibling comment:
> The cost premium of biofuels for air travel aren’t that high and the scale can meet demand for long distance flights. Fertilizer from nitrogen in the atmosphere is again cost competitive relative to that kind of increase. Batteries are fine for ocean shipping on a ~50 year timescale, and that basically covers burning fossil fuels. Using it as a feedstock for plastics etc is a non issue for climate change.
I think you're mistaken here. Biofuels for air travel are much more complex than just pricing. You've got regulatory approvals, cost of retrofitting existing engines / figuring out how to make them drop-in without needing petroleum, etc. If you're thinking that batteries are fine for ocean shipping, I'd like a sample of what you're taking because the energy demands of massive ship containers dwarf the capabilities of batteries. That's why they're talking hydrogen fuel cells and nuclear.
> It’s not that we’re going to run out 100% year X, it’s that as economies of scale end priced inherently spike. Gas stations can scale down to 1940’s levels by having most of them close, but giant fuel refineries, pipelines, etc need scale to be worth the maintenance.
Conversely, there's a huge incentive to have oil be competitively priced and avoid a total collapse of that segment. That's why you see huge resistance politically - there's no real plan put forward for how we transition to a clean energy economy for the people currently participating in the oil economy.
Oil is consumed, lithium isn’t. There’s plenty of lithium to electrify the world multiple times, but it’s just an element so you can literally recycle it for billions of years.
> You've got regulatory approvals, cost of retrofitting existing engines / figuring out how to make them drop-in without needing petroleum, etc
0.2% of global aviation fuel is already biofuels, the regulatory processes is already involved and we’re talking a 50+ year timeframe here there’s plenty of options without retrofitting existing aircraft.
As to boats, weight and volume are a non issue so they scale just fine into the 24,000 TEU behemoths. Upfront costs are prohibitively expensive though operating costs are presumably. That said, there’s many options, ships are one of the few cases where hydrogen is a realistic possibility.
Recycling lithium is typically more expensive than extracting it through mining. Recycling companies claim a recovery rate of 95-98% so certainly lithium is lost and that's ignoring that smaller batteries often don't even end up in the recycling stream. But the important bit is the cost - if it's more expensive than mining then the recovery isn't economical then either there's a government subsidy or the lithium ends up diluted in the trash stream. You'd have a point about nickle or cobalt because they're particularly valuable but lithium is not so it is effectively being consumed.
> 0.2% of global aviation fuel is already biofuels
But it's not even clear that biofuels reduce CO2 due to production, processing & transport as well as land clearing for scaling it up. [1] suggests that biofuels can actually end up emitting more CO2 than the fossil fuels they replace (for example here's an earlier study [2]). And that's ignoring the substantial scaling challenges that SAF faces on the production side. I hope it works out but the lesson with huge risky bets is that many don't pan out and all we have now is large risky bets left which makes me pessimistic we'll succeed just because we run out of oil (assuming we even do which again seems highly unlikely to me because that's not how economics works).
[1] https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-should-we-measure-co2-em...
[2] https://theconversation.com/biofuels-turn-out-to-be-a-climat...
As to lithium being consumed, it’s still around we don’t actually need to recycle it to be available to humanity in the future. We’re talking hundreds to thousands of years from now before mining becomes an issue, current economic issues are largely meaningless. Unlike oil, these are the early days of the lithium economy. Making a big battery pile somewhere is perfectly reasonable form of recycling.
As noted in the MIT article:
> Since most natural ecosystems absorb and store carbon, while farmland in active use tends to produce it, this land use change can create more climate-warming pollution
Basically the land is changed from a carbon store to a carbon producer for biomass meaning you're no longer sequestering the carbon which is where you get extra carbon in the ecosystem even if you're not having any carbon in the transportation & production.
Much of the world was covered in forests for literally millions of years. Dig down a deep as roots go, count up the carbon in a given acre, and divide by a few million and you get essentially 0/year as the long term rate.
Transitions between forests and farmland basically store or release a fixed quantity per acre though it’s a slow process for deep root systems.
We can make anything up. Why not stick to the facts, as we know them, and reasonable projections?
There is no reasonable projection for any fuel other than fossil fuel to maintain the sort of flying we do now.
Unless you are deeply involved in battery technology, your prediction seems overly pessimistic.
Not suggesting the article below is in any way conclusive but just one of many that turn up on a basic google search.
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/passenger-electric-planes-be...
500 miles is nothing. The median flight distance for a commercial flight is ~2000 miles. And this is a concept plane. Certification of a plane is ~5-9 years so let's assume on the longer side since electric planes aren't really a thing. So 20% of your time budget has been spent building a replacement for a puddle jumper. There's a lot of them but the real fuel consumption happens by the large commercial jets.
That is a fantasy
The cost of doing that at a scle approaching what we use now rules it out except for niche uses
Activities such as tilling of fields, planting of crops, and shipment of products cause carbon dioxide emissions. Agriculture-related emissions of carbon dioxide account for around 11% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
At current prices. As prices go up new sources of fuel become economical and the cycle continues. Not to mention that methane emissions from agriculture are a significant contributor as well (30% from cows) so just removing hydrocarbons doesn’t solve that problem.
It seems like an unrealistic bet that hydrocarbon-based emissions drop to 0 just because you think we’ll run out of fuel in 50 years. Does that mean airplanes stop flying in 50 years? No one is making these bets in the marketplace alongside you for good reason. And remember, consumption grows quite a bit year over year so you’re looking at a much shorter time frame if your prediction were to be true.