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Oil isn't going to disappear because of oil. Oil disappears because of batteries and the improvements that have been made over decades.

To say oil will win over batteries (where applicable) is to say that either 1) battery improvements will not continue; or 2) that oil is somehow immune to economics.

Any discussion of the end of oil without mentioning batteries is incomplete. They are the driver of the change.

so who is going to replace all the oil that is being used in jets, diesel trucks in third world countries, tanks, humvees, non-nuclear powered naval ships?

Tesla built the largest battery producing plant and they are going to meet the demand? They can't even meet their own supply targets for their cars! Are they going to retrofit F-22s with batteries? How about a farmer in India, is he going to be able to afford a Tesla Tractor vs the one he was using since he's grandfather?

You seem to be absolutely sure that the oil will be replaced by batteries without taking into a lot of uncertainties around it.

Key phrase in my post "where applicable". Naval ships, humvees, tanks, and diesel trucks can all possibly use batteries. The grid can use batteries instead of peaker plants too (enabling more renewable energy sources to be used instead of coal).

But the F22 will still use oil--battery development is no where close to provide that level of energy-to-weight.

You seem to be arguing that we're talking about ALL oil production. But that's not true.. we're just talking about the 90+% that is used for transportation. Removing that--which if battery improvements continue absolutely will happen--oil will never see the demand it has in the past. It'll be relegated to a specialty fuel.

your version of 'where applicable' seems to be just about anything. Like you say F-22 will still use oil and not batteries, but its not just weight but ease of transportation and economies of scale of pulling oil from the ground vs. manufacturing and maintaining the whole supply chain.

Transportation in what part of the world? Please be more specific, you made it sound like countries where people can barely afford to live are suddenly going to hop onto Tesla grid and their lives change. Who benefits from this narrative do you think? Definitely not the people who will be shackled into further debts by purchasing the new paradiagm shift in energy tech.

Until you have an infinite source of energy, the battery is not truly sustainable. They all have a shelf life, maintenance and harm to the environment. There's a lot of money thats going to be involved and so will people profiteering and selling their reality and attacking people who say otherwise.

The article and the person you're responding to are saying that oil demand will peak -- start to decrease after reaching an all-time-high -- as electrified transportation displaces it. Neither is saying that oil use will go to zero.

All shipping and aviation combined -- military and civilian -- accounts for a minority of global oil use. Hummers and people in India with ancient diesel tractors are just a footnote to global oil demand. It's entirely possible for oil demand to peak without F-22s, warships, or Indian tractors ever converting to batteries.

But more importantly the whole global warming, anti-oil movement has been to minimize the impact of OPEC on US, and put pressure on oil producing nations, largely Russia

I don't think so.

> I don't think so.

care to explain? is it coincidence the global warming narrative began suddenly picking up momentum post-Crimea?

wait, you believe the global warming "narrative" began in 2014?

That's some pretty incredible confirmation bias in action

> began in 2014

'picked up in momentum' means I acknowledge it did not begin in 2014 but that the velocity of dissemination and the depth of the narrative increased.

Sorry, I'm seeing nit picking here and there with language, and it's a poor way of arguing against my original position.

As a counterpoint, the German government has been implementing its "Energiewende" (energy revolution) for much longer than that. The Renewable Energies Act became law in 2000 and brought heavy subsidies for deployment of renewables on both individual and utility scale.

And as always, government usually trails behind political movements, in this case by several decades.

As another data point, the Kyoto Protocol was signed in 1997 and went into effect in 2005. The Paris Agreement, its most important successor, was signed in 2015, which correlates with the timeline you suggest, but it's pretty impossible that this is connected to the events in Crimea since preparations were already underway for several years at that point.

> We've been saying peak oil since the 70s.

peak oil supply yes, but this is peak oil demand, which is new

I used peak oil because I knew somebody would trip up on the wording. Peak oil describes both sides, either we run out (we aren't) or we just wake up and stop using it altogether (batteries are expensive, doesn't have economies of scale, and pricing is kicked down to the consumer).

It's easy to say battery is going to replace oil in a country where you don't see poverty or people don't live on a $1 a day. Oil demand will increase in majority of the world where people are still poor.

>Burning oil is still the only reliable propulsion for space programs.

Not true. The space shuttle for example burned a solid fuel (namely, ammonium perchlorate composite propellant) and liquid hydrogen.

> solid fuel

...and where does that come from?

From aluminium, which for which the primary inputs are electricity and ore and a binder. There are numerous possible binders and many are not petrochemicals.

right the ingredients still rely one way or other on dinosaur juice. you made it sound as if NASA was able to produce their own fuel out of thin air and test beakers.

edit: my point was that the solid fuel still relies on oil dug out of the ground. parent seemed to suggest that wasn't the case.

And you make it sound as though there is literally nothing on earth that contains chemical energy, except for oil.

You had me until you said climate change is a government conspiracy to hurt Russia.

Is it a conspiracy that the US controls the global media and people just buy up whatever they read? After all, Russia was able to exploit this very fact into their favor.

Is it a conspiracy that the World Bank and US backed institution shackle poor countries with debt by corrupting their leaders to do their bidding? Talk to people from South America, they will have a very different opinion of US: See Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Honduras. Talk to Iran and Afghanis. Talk to people on the receiving end of US "freedom". I mean a fucking institution that was supposed to document Amazonian language ended up displacing entire communities so US companies could dig oil out of it. But whose narrative did you buy? The only one they show to American citizens. How about United Fruits? How about the Shah of Iran who conspired with Roosevelt's grandson to kick out his own father to sell off the countries oil only to have the wrath come back in a non-secular fashion? How many 'dictators' who fought against American corporatocracy are alive?

All I'm saying is just to be conscious and careful when buying into such narrative from a party with a long history of manipulation. Have you gone out and done your own studies whether to check their narrative is true? Does the average HN user have the resources and technological powers to verify the results for themselves?

Or are you one of those people who think the US goes around all over the world spreading 'freedom' for the sake of the good of those people?