You rock Amoron... thanks for thinking and sharing your thoughts ....  yeah how can we survive happiest , to the final end, if there will be an end ? What about the NOW?

Finding a new home or living is space seems an impossibility. Hey aliens, SOS from planet earth ! ~~~~~ 

   Tesla Electric Car -  7 min.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRd7ER7u-KU

   who KILLED the Electric Car? You DID! - 5 min.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlAbj6N9nA0&feature=related

"The Electric car, We should be all driving an electric car. They have been in use for over 30 years. Now the oil companies don't wont us to have them. So they are doing everything they can to stop the manufacturing of the electric car!"  ??? 

Go Battery Science - "Electric car"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car

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Nano-Antenna - Heat collector for energy souce
  Heard on, "Talk of the nation, science friday"

Google, Nano Antenna Energy Source

Nano-Antenna Arrays to Capture Heat [ energy source ]
http://www.e3alive.org/2008/08/11/nano-antenna-arrays-to-capture-heat/

"The nanoantennas target mid-infrared rays, which the Earth continuously radiates as heat after absorbing energy from the sun during the day. In contrast, traditional solar cells can only use visible light, rendering them idle after dark. Infrared radiation is an especially rich energy source because it also is generated by industrial processes such as coal-fired plants.

Umm, go science, save us !

You could probably do it as one project. Might I humbly suggest the following material as an introduction:

Robert Newman's History of Oil

How about less? Even given a plateau scenario (where oil can be pumped at a steady rate for a number of years) we've still just maxed out. So more like "in our lifetimes ..."

Engineering-wise, this one's not ready for prime time. They do make the cars, but the hydrogen comes from methane.

To be honest, I give it ten years. 

It's probably not that bad. We just won't have all the electronics, and more people will ride bicycles.

What's funny is that it would pretty much solve the global warming dilemma.

I thoroughly dislike cars, I take the bicycle for any location within 30 km/20 miles. Works fine for me and keeps me in shape as well.

And to attempt to derail the topic to my pet peeve: if people in the West would just eat half as much meat as they do now, they would conserve more energy then by leaving the car in the garage. Oh, and also conserve 20 long showers per day worth of water. Although I must admit that I will only be totally happy when everybody is a vegetarian.

Did that sound religious enough?

Are you suggesting they're unable to learn, or physically disabled in some way? I'm asking seriously - I really don't know what you mean. There are lots of countries where the bicycle is or was the dominant mode of transportation.

You mean refuse to ride bicycles and starve? That seems a bit extreme. 

The US is definitely not set up for bicycles due to the distances involved.

Hydroelectric dams are still the best, but solar and wind might be able to help. We have to cut back on a lot of things like the current state of our economy. Also, iPods, Blackberries, cellphones and computers. Then we'll have to deal with the lack of food problem. I have a feeling that'll do it for controlling populations.

While this is true...

... alright people, raise your hands if you want to ride your lil bike 30km to work, 30km from work, through the mountains, in the winter...

Canada says, "go fuck your self, we're keeping our cars"

That's ridiculous. I used to bike 12km to school every day in high school. When you get there you're more alert than anyone else. After that, I had a 14km ride to work for two years. I'm not a cyclist, I just couldn't afford a car.

I'll let you guess how I get my groceries. Two pannier packs take care of the problem, if you still think it's "impossible".

I understand that you never learned to ride a bike. It's about as hard as learning to drive.

That I'll buy. Obviously it's impossible for you, then, to be on a bicycle. I'm not going to say you're somehow wussing out, since it would be unfair to ask someone who literally can't ride a bicycle to do so.

On the other hand, I seriously recommend finding some kind of activity to do. It helps to remove depressive states of mind. Exercise is probably the most effective anti-depressant, but nobody says that, for some reason.

K, I'll stop jacking this thread. My point was that we have a great capacity to do things without burning oil, and in fact we did them successfully for several thousands of years. In the coming discomfort, we may have to give up luxuries like whining and self-centered affirmations.

I believe she's talking about biodiesel.  Are you saying that's not possible?  If so, why?

You have three people in your house.  How much fucking food are you buying?  That must include the 10 tons of cat food you need every month or something... I prefer to go to the store more often and buy fresh foods.

my concern with Biodiesel is that most of the ingredients come from sources that are made availible by oil. what happens when oil is gone to Agriculture and it's byproducts including biodiesel? we cant farm and ride bikes there is just simply to many of us.

"On average, it takes 5.5 gallons of fossil energy to restore a year's worth of lost fertility to an acre of eroded land—in 1997 we burned through more than 400 years' worth of ancient fossilized productivity."

"Every single calorie we eat is backed by at least a calorie of oil, more like ten. In 1940 the average farm in the United States produced 2.3 calories of food energy for every calorie of fossil energy it used. By 1974 (the last year in which anyone looked closely at this issue), that ratio was 1:1. And this understates the problem, because at the same time that there is more oil in our food there is less oil in our oil. A couple of generations ago we spent a lot less energy drilling, pumping, and distributing than we do now. In the 1940s we got about 100 barrels of oil back for every barrel of oil we spent getting it. Today each barrel invested in the process returns only ten, a calculation that no doubt fails to include the fuel burned by the Hummers and Blackhawks we use to maintain access to the oil in Iraq. y 1974 (the last year in which anyone looked closely at this issue), that ratio was 1:1. And this understates the problem, because at the same time that there is more oil in our food there is less oil in our oil.

read the whole article i got this from here http://www.harpers.org/archive/2004/02/0079915

i guess you didn't read my post... food and oil are ALREADY tied together without being bio-diesel.  You should do some research on Peak oil. Watch this clip on peak oil!  http://www.chrismartenson.com/peak_oil you wont be disappointed.

The main problem with biodiesel is that it takes more gasoline/diesel/natural gas than it produces. You need to fertilize with natural gas fertilizers, power tractors with gasoline or diesel tractors, and transport with gasoline or diesel trucks and boats. As a local solution (that is, when the biodiesel is made by the same farm that's using the biodiesel) it can work. Once you centralize production of the biodiesel you get problems.

For example, Indonesia has decided that they're going to be on the forefront of biodiesel production so they can be "green". They've turned entire islands into desert so they can plant palm trees, since coconuts produce the most energy-rich oil. That's an ecological disaster created specifically for the purpose of being "green".

Of course, this should be no surprise. That's how human beings deal with drug dependence. Denial, bargaining, everybody-else-is-a-worse-user, etc.

I personally think the best thing to do would be switch all electrical power to renewable resources like wind/solar/etc where possible and nuclear power where not. If hydrogen engines could be built and work well this would make it viable - as you wouldn't be using oil to make it.

You don't actually need "data" of the type you're probably thinking. The math is simpler than that. If you take the available energy in a certain volume of biodiesel, and compare it with the available energy in the natural gas and petroleum used to fertilize and transport it, they aren't equal. Removing centralized storage and transportation actually makes biofuels feasable, but keep in mind that's not managable in terms of centralized regulation. It's difficult to control quality when you have innumerable sources of a fuel of possibly varying composition. But the math works if ethanols and biodiesels aren't shipped out of the places they're produced. (Oh, the irony.)

When it comes down to it, petroleum just has more energy-density-to-volume than any other practical solution. Biodiesel and ethanol can't really replace that, so we'd be dealing with a completely different infrastructure regardless. Even oil at this point is experiencing a diminishing return on investment from an energy point of view.

The easiest way to see it is this: right now, we're using the energy of the sun stored millions of years ago (oil) PLUS the current energy of the sun (making food and biofuels). When the oil isn't springing from the ground like it used to, we have to invest more and more energy getting it out, like pumping water into oil wells, etc. The more energy we have to put in, the more we take out of our common pool of energy. The more energy we take out of the common pool, the less we have for infrastructure, government, and empire.

Now imagine that we take the ancient sun out of the equation. That's a huge energy loss. Yes, if we can figure out a way to do that with the available solar energy (which is theoretically possible) I'd be happy. We just don't have it right now. So we'd have to take it out of our food supply. Yikes.

Energy is measured in calories. The calorific value of bio-diesel is about 33 MJ/L petro Diesel has about 10% more. But then you would also need to subtract from the bio-diesel if  fossil fuels were used anywhere along the way to make the oils for the bio-diesel.

I don't think there is anything wrong with bio-diesel it is obviously good to use those oils that would otherwise be thrown away.
But the OP was talking about how things will be after fossil fuels and that changes the discussion completely.

Amoron you should go to the links i provided they will be excellent starting points for your research. i have been reading about this subject for at least 10 years and still do not know enough about it IMO. But it's great that you are interested in such an important subject. People like you will help get us on the right track.