[spot5050]

We won't stop until we have consumed all the coal, oil and gas.

You can't conserve hydrocarbon fuels unless you bury a sack of coal in your garden.

[Tanada]

Unfortunately I think you are correct. Even if our current culture collapses too many people know about fossil fuels for them not to be exploited as time goes past. Maybe some of the hard to get stuff would fall out of reach for a while in a cultural collapse, but a fuel like Coal would be exploited even for cook stoves if it was accessible easier than firewood.

[spot5050]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', 'T')here is, and there will always be billions of barrels of oil too expensive to exploit

[Ferretlover]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ')We will use all the fuel, that we can get to, in the end

[Wootan]

Ferretlover has it right, we will use all oil/gas/coal that is commersially available.

Which of course will make plans to reduce worldwide CO2-emmissions a joke. Taxing CO2-emmissions will end up as that: A fiscal burden without any effect to mitigate global warming.

[Revi]

We'll try to burn everything up, but it will be a futile exercise in the end. Once it becomes more expensive to get the oil than what what we get out it will be over. Not that far away now.

[Wootan]

pstarr, you're right, it is just the conclusion, and I pulled it from common sense. It is almost tautological as well. Gas taxes in Europe are very high, which might reduce demand from discretionary driving. That will lower global prices slightly, and stimulate driving elsewhere. The Chindians will gladly consume every drop saved in Europe. They sell 4.000.000 new cars in China every year. Net result is more revenue to broke European countries, more happy motoring in Asia.

[Wootan]

I think you have to accept that gas (diesel to a lesser degree) has a measure of price-elasticity. Low prices makes for increased consumption. (The price-elasticity of both gas and diesel is interesting, I would guess that you have discussed it on PO.com many times.)

In addition you have Jevon's paradox "that technological progress that increases the efficiency with which a resource is used, tends to increase (rather than decrease) the rate of consumption of that resource". (Wiki) More fuel-efficient cars will NOT make the remaining oil last longer.

But even so, higher taxes in Europe will only make a delay in oil consumption, only flatten the curve slightly. We will still use all the fuel. In any foreseeable future, the fire-brigade will not arrive on bicycles.

[Tanada]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tanada', 'C')oal would be exploited even for cook stoves if it was accessible easier than firewood.

[spot5050]

Wow Tanada, you have an agenda. I asked "We will use all the fuel in the end?"

You get into this;

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tanada', 'I') am talking about the scenario where fuel is precious and the wage slaves or outright enslaved persons are sent digging into the earth with picks and shovels under very hazardous conditions to provide fuel for the upper management and political administrators... Think Sector 12 in The Hunger Games, not mountaintop removal in 2012."

[Plantagenet]

If our society completely collapses it is unlikely to rise again, because all the good deposits of near surface oil and minerals have been totally used up. There is so little left high grade mineral ore left on this planet that people are seriously considering mining asteroids.



We'd better keep this society going, because there is no way we can start over with picks and shovels and find enough stuff to build another advanced industrial society up from scratch.

[spot5050]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', 'T')here is so little left on this planet that people are seriously considering mining asteroids.

[scas]

Peoples beliefs dictate reality.

If everyone agrees that we will burn all the fuel, we will probably end up collapsed in a 6+ degree anomaly world.

[Tanada]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', 'I')f our society completely collapses it is unlikely to rise again, because all the good deposits of near surface oil and minerals have been totally used up. There is so little left high grade mineral ore left on this planet that people are seriously considering mining asteroids.

We'd better keep this society going, because there is no way we can start over with picks and shovels and find enough stuff to build another advanced industrial society up from scratch.