At current usage rate, how much oil is left in world reserves?

[Bucky]

Measured in time, how long until the world's known oil reserves run out?

[taterguy]

1. I suspect that people are answering based on how far their commute is

[Bucky]

2. A shame since, because of Heisenberg principles, this poll determines what will really happen

I was really sort of hoping that with enough blind faith in the industry's geologists, we'd be able to lick this energy crisis for good.

The correct answer, by the way, is 42.9 years (if you scroll about ¾ of the way down)

[JoeyT]

3. Even if there is that much left

that doesn't mean it's going to be affordable to use it up to that point.
As the supply dwindles and the demand increases or remains constant the price will skyrocket long before the last well goes dry.
I'm hoping we're on to cleaner and better energy sources long before it strikes the $20 a gallon mark, but if I had to bet, I'd bet against it. I'd bet we do what we always do: Ignore the problem and scream about how the free market will save the day, right up until the lava hits the front door.

[taterguy]

12. Well, shit, why didn't you tell me that before I voted?

Sorry dude.

BTW, do those current usage totals take into account population growth?

[kirby]

8. Nah, just how many year till I retire. n/t

[depakid]

4. Reframing the choices tends to make them more relevant to the 21st Century

How do you (or we- as democracies) play the game?

What strategy do you use to place your bet?

[izquierdista]

10. Some of each?

Technology can help greatly. Before cheap oil, butanol from fermentation was a technology that provided fuel for internal combustion engines; now it is making a comeback.

Reducing waste can also help. The amount of waste going to landfills represents a sizable amount of energy.

Better family planning and contraception can help to reduce the total demand for food and energy.

[Progressive Albertan]

5. I don't think it matters.

What should matter is keeping as much of it in the ground where it belongs.

[wuvuj]

6. Your next decade and beyond....

CLICK the link to see the graphs.....

http://campfire.theoildrum.com/node/6072#more

Another year. Another decade. Older, wiser and on an unchanged trajectory. Though it may not feel like it, 2010 puts us 5 years beyond the annual peak in world oil production. 2005 was also the inaugural year of this website - devoted generally to exploring the details, constraints and opportunities accompanying energy depletion. Just behind oil's apex was credit's peak, and as energy and debt have been the two primary drivers of economic growth, GDP won't be far behind in declining from all time highs, though it has been temporarily supported by sovereign debt infusions masking public/private credit decline. Though I suspect 2010 will be a watershed year for many in dealing with reality, a new year also allows for some self-reflection, and perhaps a reassessment of purpose and tactics, both as individuals and as a culture. The below essay is a short summary on where we are, what brought us here, and some resolutions for the coming year.

As I write this the mercury on our thermometer drops below -18 F. I sip imported coffee and pasteurized cream in a room made toasty warm with a combination of ancient sunlight (propane), old sunlight (wood) and today's sunlight (south facing windows). I write these words on a portable computer and bounce them 2000 miles up into the sky where they get beamed back down to our Gaia server so that strangers (and some friends) around the planet can read them. And I've yet to have breakfast, which will be something tasty, fresh from our electrical refrigerator. My 3 dogs and 4 cats are sprawled in myriad ways around the couch and floor, patiently waiting for their kibble. I peer out the window to watch my girlfriend feeding and watering our 4 horses, with hay harvested and stacked by complex tractors and water pulled up from 250 feet via electricity. Nick Drake is playing on my Ipod shuffle connected to a Bose Wave and the first Saturday of 2010 has begun, with things I have become accustomed to, and enjoy. Convenience, comfort and novelty on demand.

We did not always live like this, and for the majority such high throughput will probably not be possible a generation hence, proximately due to many causes but ultimately for lack of energy gain. Centuries ago, the discovery of new lands and new fuels combined with the passage of time and humans gradually honed in on the natural sociopolitical system for a cooperative/competitive/curious species with access to a huge stored surplus - what some now refer to as turbo capitalism. Energy has been the primary driver of economic growth - take away energy and technology and productivity melt away. Fossil fuels allow us to run myriad processes at 2-3 cents per kWh input (w/oil at $75) whereas human labor globally costs about $12 per kWh (and considerably higher in USA). Without this immense stable labor subsidy everything changes, from our international trade system to our local food, water, heat and medicine delivery systems and most of the in between components.

Everything did in fact start to change in the 1970s, as US energy per capita consumption peaked, real wages peaked, US oil production peaked, and we started to use debt (spatial and temporal reallocation of real wealth) to increasingly supplement energy's role in current growth. Urged on by socially acceptable excess consumption via advertising, borrowing from the future also became socially acceptable, and the linkages between real capital (natural, built, human and social) and financial markers for this real wealth became blurred. I should clarify: I think we have plenty of energy, resources, technology and materials for this many or more humans for a generation or so to come, just not at current levels of consumption, aspiration, and the perceived extant (digital) wealth.

If we lived in a society of 100% reserve requirements, then peak oil would have been later, and implied higher oil prices pretty much right after the peak. As it stands, though, debt pulled forward allocations of energy and other resources and the 'peak affordability' engendered by credit collapse will run its course first. It is important to understand we are not close to running out of available energy or resources, even for this many billions. But it is very clear (to me at least) that the amount of energy flow rates (and accompanying non-energy inputs like water) are not enough to service/maintain the accumulated financial claims in this system, especially given that a large % of energy inputs have been spent long ago. It is likely if not inevitable that the claims extant in current system will cause currency reform which in turn has implications for all sorts of interdependent systems based on just-in-time inventories and global trade.

We are roughly where I thought we’d be 5 years past peak (technically just 1 year off the plateau) – still trying to maintain the façade that everything is normal, shorter attention spans, shorter interest in things academic and more interest in things practical. And a concerted effort among the icons of society to borrow and legislate our way back to just before the social precipice. I, like many people, misjudged government and central bank efforts to keep things afloat in the near term, and this could well continue for a while. Ignorance is bliss and all that.

Given this backdrop and without further preamble, let me share my own thinking about 2010 in the form of my personal resolutions given my perspective on the world, and society. You may notice a general theme throughout the list.

more....

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

7. We'll never run out.

But it's usefulness as the world's power source will diminish rapidly in 30 years.

[RC]

11. How can we not run out when we keep using more and more per capita

with each passing day?

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

13. You'll neither extract, nor find, it all. nt

[Kaleva]

9. Depends on if one includes tar sand, oil shale and coal.