“How can you not have insurance?”
“Because I spent my money on the Clapco D29, the most impenetrable lock on the market today. It has only one design flaw, the door must be closed!”
Oil will never run out
If you asked 100 people what they thought the most significant invention of the 20th century was, you would probably have a handful of popular answers. Some would say the ‘micro-chip’, some would say ‘the internet’ and there’s no doubt that these things have transformed our lives in previously unimagined ways. But I suspect the majority of people, given a chance to ponder the question, would choose the internal combustion engine. This small, light, versatile powerplant has mobilised the planet’s population, and given the horseless carriage to the world. The invention of the reciprocating internal combustion engine as seen in cars and motorcycles afforded cheap, efficient, reliable, clean transport to the masses as never seen before.
I say clean, because relatively speaking they were very clean. In the 1890s, London transport was typically horse-drawn. Taxis, buses, carts, wagons were all horse drawn, and there were at least 100,000 horses on the streets of London each producing an average of 10kg of manure per day. In 1894, one writer in The Times estimated that in 50 years time the streets of London would be buried under 3m of manure. To these London dwellers, the horseless carriage couldn’t come soon enough.
So significant was its invention, that we have become totally dependent on it to make our world work. Life without the internal combustion engine is almost inconceivable.
In recent months, we have seen vast fluctuations in the oil price as concerns about supply meeting demand elevated the price (granted those pesky Somali pirates didn’t help). Nowadays things have settled to a more reasonable level and the hype seems to have left the oil markets for now, as attention has been turned to an apparent world-wide economic meltdown. What a wonderful thing distraction is.
Now the internal combustion engine is to the 20th century and mass mobilisation, as the steam engine was to the 19th century and the mass industrialisation. And in like manner the 21st century will bring its own specific brand of innovation which will take things a step further. This is not idle speculation, this is the way of evolution of the planet, and of the species. Some bright spark will invent some clever device that will revolutionise our lives, and it will be just what we were hoping for.
As thoughts about the cost and supply of oil predominate the mass consciousness, alternative fuels and transport means will be invented and developed, and in the same way that the steam engine made way for the internal combustion engine, the I-C engine will go the way of the steam engine, and make way for something else. With erratic fuel market price fluctuations, and many countries’ almost total reliance on imports of oil and gas from abroad, demand has never been higher for an alternative fuel or usable energy supply to replace oil. As research into alternative fuels continues and an alternative is found, demand for oil products will dry up long before the oil does.
So yes, oil will never run out. Demand for oil will disappear as the next generation technology makes it redundant. We are seeing new clean and efficient fuel technologies emerging all the time; the most recent of these being the hydrogen fuel cell, as demonstrated in the FXC Clarity, a zero emissions saloon from Honda.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
