Dont poison the wildlife...ill shoot'em

[RoadClosed]

Actually I have been all over the midwest especially around the time when soybeans really started to take off because it was becoming more profitable. There are tons of the stuff; miles and miles, even hundreds of miles. I wonder though, how much soybeans it would take to fuel a society of our capacity? Is it possible?

Right now even the most used bio fuel seems to be the B20 variety, you still need 80 percent of that to contain petrolueum based additive. Anything else, such as the B100 requires modification outside of just giving it a good cleaning in a current engine. And all the above still emit more toxins harmful to life than gasoline. But it seems to be a good viable future alternative.

[MURACU]

bballad : That is more or less what I am saying. The oil and energy concerns can see the writing on the wall because it is coming at them at an ever increasing speed. I am not sure what the estimations are but I think there is enough oil to keep us going till about 2100 at our present rate of consumption. After that we will have no other choice but to use other forms of energy production.
As far as I can tell over here in Europe, or at least in France, petroleum substitutes are not that well developed. On the automobile side of things electric cars are the way we seem to be going. There is no direct pollution (except for the batteries) and the infrastructure is easy to put into place. The main problem is they have autonomy of only about 100km (60 miles) so they are not much good for out of city use. Then next generation should have double that which should make them more viable for rural use.

[RoadClosed]

Marcu, I believe also that perhaps electric movement is our future. It is true there is around 100 or 200 years of oil left by what I have learned over the years. Fuel isn't the only think that oil is used for, polymers are one. Without oil the plastics used in the car and the battery could not be possible. There are plastics available from renewable resources and plastic can be recycled but at the rate humans utilize plastic, it is not currently possible to sustain the demand without oil. That is only ONE byproduct of oil. This is one reason why I was always so pissed off at political fanatics who systematically dismantled and tore down the ability to conduct nuclear power initiatives. It's one of the issues that turned me to the dark side of conservative politics. One of many.

[bballad]

I would question the numbers one how much oil we have left, some long abandond depositis have been refilling...and places like Il in the midwest are filled wit hoil that is currently too expensive to purify

[RoadClosed]

I was speaking of world wide terms. The US has been on a decline in oil production since the 70s. Here are a link of some essays collected at Stanford . Everyone has their own idea on when oil production will peak, the range covers decades. Once the peak is determined and we cross it, one can calculate the decline rate and predict the end of earth's oil supply. But as the last 20 or 30 years have proved, technology keeps slowing the decline rate and will continue to do so as more effort is placed on alternative and renewable fuels. (my take)