There are 1.65 trillion barrels of proven oil reserves in the world as of 2016.
The world has proven reserves equivalent to 46.6 times its annual consumption levels. This means it has about 47 years of oil left (at current consumption levels and excluding unproven reserves).
This means that the oil is going to run out in our lifetime
Source/more reading: https://www.worldometers.info/oil/
Update: It is infact not true (or just partially true), because it only considers already known oil reserves that can be pumped out with current technology.
There is more oil that can potentially be used as technology and infrastructure advances, so the estimate of 50 years is wrong.
For the correction thanks to [email protected] (their original comment)
Part of me wishes that the oil would run out sooner to give governments more urgency to actually do something about our fossil fuel dependency, cause apparently the increasingly apparent effects of climate change just aren’t enough motivation.
I remember going to a presentation in Boulder Colorado in 2005 or somewhere near there about how the world will run out of oil in 10-15 years, they had tons of data they had collected with a bunch of researches and everything.
We just keep discovering more and more oil, and get better at extracting it.
I mean, yes, but there is a finite amount, we just don’t have the ability to accurately gauge how finite. We also created new techniques for extraction and technology changed to enable those new techniques.
The information was good at the time, but it won’t get better at the same rate, we’re closer to the truth now than we were before because of advancement.
Anyway, my point is the new estimate is much closer to true than the one your comparing it to.
I wish it would run out much sooner. Burning fossil fuels is responsible for 20% of all deaths in the world.
Off topic but the amount of oil we have left is the least of humanities’ concerns right now imo.
Glad you already learned this is probably nonsense. The wrong reasoning is very similar to much thought about overpopulation. The amount of people that makes for a place to be overpopulated is a function of how societies work and the technologies they have at hand. One extra issue there is that improvements in technology usually lead to population growth, so much progress gets cancelled out.
I wish this was true so that there would be a hard limit to within this century, on how much ff related damage we will do.
Unfortunately, they are still finding more, particularly in the north. How much yet-to-be-proven oil still out there is what really should be considered along with technology improvements that increase how much oil can be effectively recovered.
Oooh I didn’t think about that… I’ll update the post
The reason for the 50 years of oil, as I heard it explained, is that this is how far ahead the oil companies plan. They look for enough oil to cover the timeframe they plan for. When they have that covered, they don’t look, until they need more. When they need more, they go and find it.
Not to mention the vast reserves known to be in Antarctica.
That treaty is only going to last so long before people start getting desperate and start fighting over it.
I remember when they said there were 30 years left in the '90s.
Yeah, not trying to poke holes, but I was hearing “less than 50 years left” when I was in school in the 2000s. I do remember seeing a post here and there about new oil reservoirs being discovered but never any follow up. So I suppose that could be stretching things out. But oil use certainly hasn’t decreased in the last 25 years.
By 2050, there might even be 70 years of oil left!
I heard the same thing 30 years ago.
There are still unproven reserves waiting to be discovered.
The amount discovered in each of the last three years has been less than a year’s worth of consumption. The global consumption rate is still rising. At some point we will necessarily run out. The lack of readily available reserves has already lead to “innovations” like fracking, oil sands, and deep sea extraction. Those techniques weren’t profitable when production is easy, but they have delayed the inevitable.
I fully expect to see solar powered wells extracting oil that otherwise has a negative EROI in my lifetime.
Under the Arctic. Underneath the seabeds in the deep oceans. Probably other places that are hard to get to right now.
The question that really needs to be asked is not can we find more oil, we absolutely can and will seek it out. We should ask, can the environment that we live in support more burning of even more oil? We all know that answer, that’s why we’re cutting our emissions down rapidly. /s
The environment that we live in is more fertile now that we’ve got more CO2 in the atmosphere.
More people die of cold than of heat.
I’d say our environment is A-OK with us burning oil.
This is the dumbest thing I’ve heard in a month, and I heard donald trump talk.
These are healing hurricanes!
Fuck off, Ben Garrison
Fertile for what though? It’s true there is more greening in some places, but that doesn’t equate to a better world for humans and animals used to the previous climate. Plants are better at adapting to this, for now anyway.
The fertility of the soil that I brought up isn’t even about CO2.
Fun fact, with climate change you can get both cold and heat deaths. Warming of the Earth doesn’t mean just heat.
Need to get outside of that echo chamber of climate denial. Oh right, you all have mostly moved on from denial to “it’s fine”. I forget the talking points sometimes. Harder to keep up with those than the facts.
There was 50 years worth of oil left 20 years ago too
I believe prices will increase dramatically long before we actually run out. Any non-critical usage of plastics and petroleum products will be phased out for economic forces if nothing else.
The trick is figuring out how to make that happen. Today.
You could easily argue that practically non-existent passenger trains and slow adoption of EVs in the US is primarily caused by cheap gasoline. Maybe if we fixed prices to be higher, we’d be able to make the progress we need
I believe gasoline is indeed heavily subsidized. I always thought that was a strange choice.
I was in Norway a few days ago and I was impressed how pretty much all the vehicles I saw were EVs and that the bus system appeared to be relatively efficient.
Yeah don’t bother thinking about the future. The market will sort it out. Just go buy some shit.
They’ve been saying this for 50 years at least.
The way things are going we’re all going to be dead before it gets to that point
Probably because of all the dipshits in this thread specifically, acting like we don’t need to stop extracting and using oil.
And it could be caused by nuclear fallout before climate change gets critical
What’s the implication? Invest in oil barrels?
No, I think quite the opposite. I learned this recently and I was quite surprised no one ever uses this as one of the arguments for renewable sources of energy.
Because why invest in an industry that is basically declining and wouldn’t be around after 50-60 years.
People have been using this as an argument for renewables since what? The 70s oil crisis? As new ways to access hydrocarbons got discovered the horrified realization was that there are plenty of reasons to bail on those faster than they run out, unfortunately. The issue isn’t that we’ll run out, it’s the amount of damage we’ll cause until that point.
And also, it’ll take much longer to run out, but others have mentioned that already.
This thread is interesting to me mostly as a periodic reminder that culture wars have shorter memories than one would think. People forget hotly contested issues and the public opinion battle lines around them at a horrifying pace. You’d think it has to do with old people dying and new people growing up, but it’s a lot faster than that.
It’s because it isn’t true. We don’t go looking unless it’s needed.
I’ll be 91. I’m sure I’ll have bigger problems by that point.
…such as having been dead for the past 49 years!
Shiiit, 1985 to 2075? That’s a long life
It’s ok, there isn’t 50 years of world left.
Of human-habitable world, you mean.
Imagine if the dinosaurs had newspapers back then: “THE WORLD IS ENDING!!” And mammals be like “lol”
Why do you people insist on making this insane point every time? We’re talking about the unnecessary death of everything you’ve ever seen. Stop trying to lighten the mood you absolute twat.
I’m not lightening the mood; I’m just stating a fact. Some cells billions of years ago started producing this very highly toxic, very highly poisonous gas that killed 99% of everything that was living back then on Earth. That gas spread everywhere. It was horrible. Death everywhere. Did the world end? Nope. New life adapted and thrived. The gas was oxygen.
Now it seems like it will be CO2. Produced by carbon-based organisms, like those oxygen-producing assholes of a distant past. And I, just like the universe, say, “eh… it happens.”
But more to the point - naaaaah, the world will be fine. Humans ain’t going nowhere. We’re what, 8 billion already? That’s 8 million of millions of people. Some of us will just move underground, or to the poles. But chances are, we’ll fix this issue before it becomes a human extinction event.
Every human ever has believed this. Christians have believed they’re the last generation for 2,000 years now
There’s not? Why?
Climate collapse
