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Comment by fwipsy | Hacker News Reader

What date is that? Petrochemicals aren't all stored in a big tank somewhere. My model is that there are many marginal sources which are not cost-effective to exploit, but which could be exploited with better technology or at a higher cost. I do not think we will ever extract all of these; instead, the cost of extraction will increase gradually, shifting incentives towards other energy sources.

I don't think anyone really knows what the future will look like.

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Some napkin math suggests July 11, 2478 AD assuming 1% annual growth and utilization of PtL / Fischer–Tropsch.

Closer to March 19, 2063 if you just mean crude oil supplies only.

>assuming 1% annual growth and utilization of PtL / Fischer–Tropsch

Is that assuming a large fraction of the supply will be synthetic fuels created by electrolysis?

I would like to see the napkin. I wasn't aware synthetic fuels were on that kind of a trajectory.

2072. This date hasn't changed from 4 years ago.

Try google:

  At what approximate date will all known reserves of petroleum be exhausted, providing that the global rate of consumption and increase in consumption remains steady, and provided that all available resources can be extracted, even if we do not currently have the technology to do so yet?

The fact that we do not know what the future will look like, means we should make our best efforts to understand certain likely scenarios, and adjust our own behavior and actions accordingly in order to be a part of designing a future that is attainable and practicable given the current conditions/inertia at all socio-economical levels.

Your assumptions are equivalent to the "big tank" model. You assume that there's a fixed amount of petroleum, we know where all of it is, and we'll extract all of it. My point is that increased costs of extraction will push us away from petroleum before we reach a hard limit. Also, we could discover more petroleum -- you specify "known reserves" but it seems unlikely to me that we've really found all of it. (Not an expert though!)

Personally, I hope we transition to green energy sooner rather than later, but I think that these predictions are overconfident. A lot more will change in 50 years than in 4.

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