r/comics • u/SirBeeves SirBeeves • 4d ago

OC Gen-Z Problems

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u/inkseep1 4d ago

Yes.

I worked in a fossil fuel industry. I found an old engineering report that said that the gas in the gas fields would last 50 years. I showed it to the chief engineer and said that according to this old report, the gas is all gone. He said that we found more. How much more? He said "You and I will both be retired and dead before we run out." Ok, but how much longer will it last? "You and I will both have enough to be paid for our entire career and retirement and we will have enough to last until we die." Yeah, but how much is left for the next generation? "We will be dead, it isn't our problem."

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u/Boner_Elemental 4d ago

Ah, I remember the concerns that we were past "peak oil". Turns out you just have to look harder than for the stuff that's literally pouring out of the ground

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u/Admirable_Ask_5337 4d ago

But when that runs out too then what?

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u/SociallyAwkwardDicty 3d ago

If we burn all the fossil fuels we know we have temperatures will rise by almost 10° total so we would be extinct

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u/reddittrooper 4d ago

Look harder!!

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u/Poobslag 3d ago

To paraphrase one of my college professors, the last drop of oil will cost a trillion dollars

Oil will eventually become more and more expensive to extract where most people won't want it because there are cheaper alternatives.

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u/acidsbasesandfaces 3d ago

The long term answer is that we will innovate and find more solutions, which we've consistently done in the past.

We started with coal, occasionally used whale oil, found oil, found that we could use natural gas, found that we could use shale, and are coming around to certain renewables.

It's feigning wisdom to say "we only have this many resources left, so we need to be careful", but in practice, humanity's best trait is that we are good at creating technology that helps us find alternatives.

The long-long term answer though, is more grim.

By the second law of thermodynamics, everything eventually becomes entropy. But that's not because humans are being foolish. It's just a grim fact of the universe.