Can you help me find a reliable source that accurately tell us how long we have before fossil fuels run out?
I find plenty of sources that say between 50 and 100 years, but I’m looking for reliable source.
Please and Thank You
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@Dutchess_III Even the most reliable source couldn’t tell you because the answer to this is based on so many variables: How much accessible fossil fuel is in the ground (this is unknown)? What will the rate of fossil fuel consumption be in the future? The latter of which is based on the rate of global population increase/decrease, the rate of transition to EVs (which itself is based on who is in power across all of the various governments and the availability of resources), and the state of the global economy, any wars that may happen etc.
The fact that there’s such a broad range indicates a more reliable assessment IMO than a source claiming a very specific figure. It’s like asking what the temperature in Kalamazoo will be at noon in 34 years 3 months and 4 days from now. Anyone claiming they can give you an accurate answer to that question is full of it.
^ Yep. That can’t be predicted, because both supply and future consumption are complex and unknowable with accuracy than can be converted to time, except as broad estimates or guesses based on past statistics.
How about using at our current rate?
How much do you want to pay for gas $50.00 maybe 3 hundred years, it is the cost of extracting it out of the ground that determines how many years of oil there is in the ground.
Even just looking at oil reserves, it’s not known how much there is. The numbers change as new speculative oil reserves become proven or disproven. And also, there are different conditions for extraction – there are easier/safer oil fields to extract from (e.g. Texas & California) and more dangerous/expensive/dirty ones we hopefully won’t ever fully eploit (e.g. Tar Sands, Arctic).
But to take one stab, one report indicates that the total world reserves of crude oil including lease condensate reserves, at some point in 2020, was 1662 billion barrels. Another site with a handy calculator estimates 35.4 billion barrels used per year, and estimates 47 years at that rate.
Note that that is actually also consistent with a 100-year estimate, IF we assume that humans attempt to reach 0% usage by the time the fuel runs out. A theoretical steady abandonment of fossil fuels would tend to double the time it takes to use it up. But that’s a crude way of estimating such a complex situation.
.I appreciate all.the answers.
For me the crunch point is not about fossil fuels. We are currently living through the upheaval which will distinguish our age beyond the arrival of the nukes. It’s here already and it’s the fact that rising temperatures are rendering a significant portion of the globe’s current population zones uninhabitable. I was reading an article that declared Arizona might well be uninhabitable in the Summer months by 2050. And it struck me that I’d had this conversation with my brother who retired with his wife there, yet flees every April for the great house they built 20 years ago on a lake adjacent a forest in South Dakota. Apparently, the bulk of the people in his Tony Az. neighborhood migrate as reliably as the birds.
I don’t know about coal, but I read this somewhere: “Oil reserves may run out about 2066.”
I would agree with @HP – many areas of the currently inhabited areas of the world will become uninhabitable well before we run out of fossil fuels. So the real problem is trying to keep the world habitable. That will take cooperation of everyone (which doesn’t seem forthcoming).
We’re in for some migration debacles like the world has never seen nor imagined.
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