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Comment by diafygi | Hacker News Reader

Only about 7% of oil isn't burned. So you'd have to grow the plastics, asphalt, etc. industries by 10x to make up for the 2/3rd stranded assets. That's a lot of plastic spaceships and parking lots.

http://energy.gov/articles/hows-and-whys-replacing-whole-bar...

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It's not like we have to use all the oil in the planet this century. Saving oil for making plastics and other useful products makes sense.

Interesting question, is it better to mine it now and store it, or tear down the industry and rebuild it if we come to need it again in the future?

I once read an article explaining that storing oil is definitely not easy. IIRC, it was super toxic, abrasive, could easily be set on fire, and of course, super valuable => you need almost a bunker to store it...

Oil is already a boom/bust business. Leaving oil and in the geological formations where it sits is probably the best way to store it.

I think Tim Flannery (though probably not the first or only one to) proposed the benefits of retaining a huge volume or oil & coal in case we ever need to thoughtfully kick-start a greenhouse effect.

There are more potent and shorter term greenhouse gases we could produce for that purpose.

And parking lots are going to take a huge hit regardless, with some mix of population decline in first world countries (less cars overall), self driving cars (again, less cars), and populations continuing to migrate to major population centers (mass transit > cars).

More parking lots but not roads? An I missing something?

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