Second_in_pie
Senior Member
Yes, but even with technology, it would take a very long time to make oil out of our waste. It would make a lot more sense to build facilities to produce, store and distribute hydrogen rather than make facilities to slowly make oil (which even with technology might take tens or hundreds of years.)Isn't petroleum formed through the accumulation, burial, and transformation of organic material—such as the remains of plants and animals—by chemical reactions over long periods of time? In other words, couldn't we make oil from our organic garbage? But do we have a million or so years?
The future will have to become oil free, mainly because we have little choice otherwise. The best option is to create a stronger footing on public transit and active transportation than we have now. The remaining cars of the world would either run on Electricity, Hybrid-Biodiesel or Hydrogen. I think I saw an interesting study that concluded that solely switching to hydrogen is not a viable option. With our current numbers, only something like only 1/4 of all cars in major cities (Toronto included) would be able to run off hydrogen, as the water produced as a by-product would actually have adverse effects on our cities climates
So when you factor in growth and those such things, the best option is to have a majority of the public using public transportation, with electric cars running for people exclusively living inner-city that require a car for some reason or another. Hybrid-Biodiesel and Hydrogen would be used mostly by those who travel longer distances or require a higher horsepower (the best option would be Hybrid-Hydrogen Combustion or Biodiesel if horsepower is a big factor.)
Also, recent studies have shown that the earth may not actually be producing more oil, so it's possible that even in 100 million years, we won't have any more oil. Apparently, oil might take very specific conditions to be formed, and those conditions were last present in the oxygen-rich environment from before the Triassic period, and ending in the Cretaceous.
So in the end, no matter how much you love it, we'll have to ditch oil soon. Sure, it's a useful thing, but the world will be better off when we've based society off other technologies and materials for a number of reasons.
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