All the Oil
A lot of people talk about how much oil we use and how we are running out. Others point out strange occurances such as an ever increasing supply.
Most people tend to underestimate the size of the earth when talking about oil and how much we use. Consider this exercise:
From 1970 - 2005 the demand for oil in the United States went from 15 - 20 million per day or about an increase of 1% per year. If you extrapolate this from 2005 - 2105, we will use a total of 1.26 trillion barrels of oil over the next 100 years. A barrel of oil is 5.6 cubic feet, therefore, we will use 7.08 trillion cubic feet of oil over the next 100 years.
It sounds like a lot.
However, consider that a cubic mile = 147 billion cubic feet. Thus, all the oil that America will use in the next 100 years would fit in a space of only 48 cubic miles. It seems like a lot, but when you consider we are drilling down 6 miles for oil (the Earths crust is roughly 40 miles deep), the city of St. Paul would comprise over 300 cubic feet (52 sq miles x 6).
When you consider the entire surface of the earth (we also get oil from the ocean) you have 196,940,400 million square miles x 6 or 1.2 billion cubic miles. Of this amount, 48 square miles comprises less than .0000041% of the space in the earth that could hold oil.
Maybe this is all oversimplification, but .0000041% is a very small number. Have we really located all the oil?
If the volume of the Earth's atmosphere is more than 10 billion cubic miles, would burning 48 cubic miles of oil into it have any noticable effect?
UPDATE: Lake Superior holds 2900 Cubic miles of water. So all the oil we need for the next 100 years would take up 1.7% of Lake Superior ....
Most people tend to underestimate the size of the earth when talking about oil and how much we use. Consider this exercise:
From 1970 - 2005 the demand for oil in the United States went from 15 - 20 million per day or about an increase of 1% per year. If you extrapolate this from 2005 - 2105, we will use a total of 1.26 trillion barrels of oil over the next 100 years. A barrel of oil is 5.6 cubic feet, therefore, we will use 7.08 trillion cubic feet of oil over the next 100 years.
It sounds like a lot.
However, consider that a cubic mile = 147 billion cubic feet. Thus, all the oil that America will use in the next 100 years would fit in a space of only 48 cubic miles. It seems like a lot, but when you consider we are drilling down 6 miles for oil (the Earths crust is roughly 40 miles deep), the city of St. Paul would comprise over 300 cubic feet (52 sq miles x 6).
When you consider the entire surface of the earth (we also get oil from the ocean) you have 196,940,400 million square miles x 6 or 1.2 billion cubic miles. Of this amount, 48 square miles comprises less than .0000041% of the space in the earth that could hold oil.
Maybe this is all oversimplification, but .0000041% is a very small number. Have we really located all the oil?
If the volume of the Earth's atmosphere is more than 10 billion cubic miles, would burning 48 cubic miles of oil into it have any noticable effect?
UPDATE: Lake Superior holds 2900 Cubic miles of water. So all the oil we need for the next 100 years would take up 1.7% of Lake Superior ....
posted by Sloanasaurus | 11/28/2005 11:53:00 PM
Additionally, there is evidence that Mother Earth is actually producing more oil, that it's not a finite resource.
At any rate, we ARE finding and inventing new energy sources. This simply is not a crisis.
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