Comment by rob74
6 hours ago
Well yeah, if we insist on continuing to burn our limited supply of hydrocarbons, soon(ish) we won't have enough for making plastics either. Or plastics will become prohibitively expensive...
6 hours ago
Well yeah, if we insist on continuing to burn our limited supply of hydrocarbons, soon(ish) we won't have enough for making plastics either. Or plastics will become prohibitively expensive...
This is not true in a practical sense. There is a lot of petrochemicals still out there and our ability to recover marginal reserves keeps improving. I was really into the idea of peak oil when I was younger but it really hasn't panned out. Rather, if we continue to using oil, we'll cook ourselves and drown ourselves in plastic.
The eventual end goal should probably be production of hydrocarbons using solar power and CO2/water. In other words, synthetic photosynthesis.
Yep, there isn't exactly a shortage of hydrogen, carbon or energy in the world. Currently we get all three from the same place, but there are other approaches