OT: What is the biggest

[Taz-in-Space]

There are hundreds of potential disasters more capable of exterminating all/most intelligent: Nuclear war, pollution, diseases (both natural and genetically tailored and wilfully released), country music .

Ummm, that Last one...Someone is going to sing the ultimate sad country song and everyone suicides?

[Kamog]

I don't think we'll run out of oil in the next couple of decades. I thought there's oil in the ground but the deposits that haven't been tapped yet are more difficult to get at. So the price of oil will keep rising as the cost of extracting the oil gets higher and higher. But we won't suddenly run out of oil; that will take much longer.

[Dragonswrd]

Actually, current estimates put us at 15 to 20 years left of oil. So yes it will be soon.

[ March 30, 2004, 13:57: Message edited by: Dragonswrd ]

[Slick]

Originally posted by Dragonswrd:
Actually, current estimates put us at 15 to 20 years left of oil. So yes it will be soon.

They said that during the "energy crisis" during the '70's too.

Slick.

[dogscoff]

country music

No... anything but that... please...

When the Arab world says that all Infidels should be killed, I think the only way to eradicate the threat would be to kill all of them.

OK, now that statement scares me.

look at what happened just before WW2, when everyone let Hitler do what he wanted and believed his crap because they didn't want to take a solid stand against what he was. We again have this type of feeling in the world today.

I agree Mac, fascism is on the rise again, and I think it is a serious threat to humanity. Bush seems determined to push the entire world into irrational fear, hysterical hatred and uncontrollable conflict, and then to dominate the survivors and strip away any kind of freedom from them. IMHO he is a major threat to the future of civilisation.

Re: oil. We will run out eventually, no-one can deny that there is only a finite supply of it (unless you want to wait a few million years for some more to be naturally formed). When it will run out I don't know, but most estimates I've seen seem range from around 5 to 100 years, depending on the agenda being pushed.
however much is out there, it all depends on how quickly we burn it up, and in particularly, how quickly the 3rd World catches up with the 1st in terms of consumption. If everyone in Africa, India and China went out tomorrow and bought a Ford each (and magically had sufficient roads/ fuel stations/ money to run them) we'd all be living in 3rd World conditions by the end of the decade. We will proabably have sufficient alternative energy sources by the time oil runs out, so that doesn't really worry me, but what are we going to do about pLastics and other oil derivatives? Imagine having to build everything out of wood, metal and other materials again. Many (most?) manufactured goods we take for granted would be impossible to build out of anything else without making major sacrifices in terms of weight and/or cost and/or strength. Look around the room you are sitting in, and try to imagine the contents without pLastic. Just think about how much pLastic you throw away every day...
Maybe pLastics could be manufactured without oil somehow, but that is bound to cost a lot of money and energy.

Re: environment. Global warming/ climate change are going to cause a lot of devastation, suffering and extinctions, but humanity and the the environment will adapt and survive. That's not to say we shouldn't work against it, it's still a very very bad thing, just not *quite* as bad as some other problems we face. Pollution is a problem and a potential planet-killer, but I believe we have what it takes to beat it and we have been on the right track for quite a few years now. Big companies and their pocket politicians are determined to change/bend/break the rules in order to continue polluting, but the world's public is against pollution, and I think eventually the will of the ppl will win.

Re: Asteroids. I'm not worried about asteroid threats- we probably (statistically speaking :-p )have a long while until we are forced to deal with that one, but we ought to be watching the skies more carefully, just to be sure, and we also ought to colonise the moon and mars, just in case.

[EvilGenius4ABetterTomorro]

Regarding Oil: I think the actual fear is running out of CHEAP oil. I think Atrocities had a link to a scary site about that. When it starts costing alot of money to pump out, process and protect the oil, people are gonna freak. Society will crash, and more wars will break out as countries try to protect or posess more oil to offset the costs.
I'm not worried, I'm counting on it. I hate this oil based society and being forced to change is a good motivator.

[Baron Munchausen]

When we run out of 'oil' or the price at least runs up to stratospheric levels, the tar sands in Canada will become economically viable to extract. It's not likely to take long for US industries to make some sort of deal and start 'refining' (messy as it might be) when the price is finally high enough to support the business. The reserves in Canada's 'tar sands' (or 'oil sands') are estimated to be larger than Saudi Arabia's crude oil reserves.

http://www.energy.gov.ab.ca/com/Sands/default.htm

http://ffden-2.phys.uaf.edu/102sprin...ects/M.Sexton/

And even if this gets used up, there have been all sorts of clever processes tried over the years to make 'syntheitc' fuel oil, including some remarkably successful processes developed in Germany during the WW II shortages. Like the tar sands, price compared to the easily available form is all that keeps these processes from being used. So it seems much more likely that we'll have to give up oil burning due to pollution before we actually run out.