Oil has not been missing.
The will to get out there and produce either crude oil, or a reliable and relatively easily available substitute for petroleum, is what is lacking. We could have an adequate number of coal-to-liquid fuel plants up and running, as well as a number of new-generation nuclear power generation plants. In fact, the nuclear “waste” we now have in storage in various places around the US would be an important resource in fueling these nuclear plants. We have the technology to separate out the radioactive isotopes that was not available back in 1960 and 1970, so what once was untouchable now becomes just another raw material for industrial use.
There are waste-to-power plants that consume solid-waste trash and rubbish, by a method known as Plasma Arc Trash Reduction, that both eliminates landfills, and produces electrical power generation as well, far in excess of the power consumed to start up the operation. There is carbon dioxide produced by this process, but it is carbon dioxide that would be produced anyway over time, plus no methane or leaching into the groundwater of various contaminants.
Carbon dioxide is plant food. In fact, to get a greener world, we may have to step up the proportions of CO2 in the atmosphere, or dissolved in the oceans of the world, just to boost the photosythesis activity of plant life, so we are assured of sufficient free oxygen in the atmosphere.
The watchword is actually to produce more and more of our energy in the form of electricity, by fueling the generators with compressed natural gas, drawn from the depths of the ocean as Methane Hydrate (just LYING there, people!), or from using the Fischer-Tropsch process to convert any of a number of carbon compounds to syngas, and using that to drive power plants. Syngas is made up of equal quantities of free hydrogen, which may be used directly in a fuel cell, and carbon monoxide, a deadly poison to almost all forms of animal life, but an excellent fuel in its own right.
The total number of alternative energy delivery systems is staggering. It is something of a puzzle why we continue to place so much of our reliance on a substance like petroleum. It is great stuff to make plastics with, and goodness knows, it can be transformed into any number of useful products, so its value is probably far greater than just as a means to generate heat.
If we NEED petroleum, we can manufacture it out of otherwise waste organic material, by a process called Thermal Depolymerization, which converts a slurry of organic wastes and water into a grade of kerogen with the application of heat, pressure, and a couple hours of time.
This could be used to reduce the effluent in wastewater plants, sending all the wastewater through this system, and letting the steam produced in the process cool and condense as distilled water, free of minerals, contaminants and pathogens. The heat could be supplied as a by-product of the operation of a nuclear power generation plant. This is essentially how clean water is supplied to the crew on a nuclear-powered warship at sea.
Satellite surveys indicate that the world is more highly forested today than at the dawn of the space age -- and the forested area is expanding year-to-year.
Maybe all that man-made CO2 is being put to good use by Mother Nature...
yes, and those alternative sources powering our electricty stations will be charging many more and more electric vehicles as companies like tesla motors, aptera, and phoenix electric cars take off. The new lithium nano batteries will take those cars 120-250 miles per charge...more than enough for almost all drivers. About 135 mpg equivalency due to lower costs of electricity and more torque and much less maintenance costs.
“If we NEED petroleum, we can manufacture it out of otherwise waste organic material, by a process called Thermal Depolymerization, which converts a slurry of organic wastes and water into a grade of kerogen with the application of heat, pressure, and a couple hours of time.”
Is it cost effective? Does it work as good as oil?
Extremely expensive and a CO2 emitter. See SASOL in South Africa
There are waste-to-power plants that consume solid-waste trash and rubbish, by a method known as Plasma Arc Trash Reduction...
Gasification more expensively done by electricity
The watchword is actually to produce more and more of our energy in the form of electricity, by fueling the generators with compressed natural gas, drawn from the depths of the ocean as Methane Hydrate ....or from using the Fischer-Tropsch process to convert any of a number of carbon compounds to syngas
First if you suck it up from the ocean it's no longer compressed. This has been looked at for years and still isn't feasible.
Fischer-Tropsch doesn't make syngas; it uses syngas as a feed.
If we NEED petroleum, we can manufacture it out of otherwise waste organic material, by a process called Thermal Depolymerization This could be used to reduce the effluent in wastewater plants....
Pyrolysis has been around for years and is still too expensive. Even Union Carbide gave up on the Purox process. Also produces a lot of bad materials (phenols, etc.) in the wastewater.
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While I admire your enthusiasm, you really should stop reading all of those DoE labs, university seeking funding, and process developer press releases. If there were any good cheap solutions, they would have been done by now.
One of the things that frosts me most of all are the number of process developers trying to get rich by selling poorly thought out, obviously uneconomic process concepts to politicians! [ethanol from corn]
If you have a good economic process, you don't need to sell it to politicians as the market will do quite fine with it. We would not be in this mess if congress wasn't composed of lawyers who don't know a damn thing about engineering or economics!
We pay so much attention to oil because it is a daily necessity, things like Syngas or Oceanic Methane are interesting, but not a likely replacement for unleaded gasoline.
And oh my yes, the Democrats really should wear the mantle of “We want you to pay more for...just about everything...”