<as we are all "heaters" radiating heat at an average temperature of 98.6 degrees fahrenheit... Multiply that by billions, and it starts to become a real problem>
Each person dissipates about 75-100 Watts at rest (more when exercising). Facilities engineers have to plan for that, but it is a drop in the bucket compared to the energy consumption of even a modest drive around town in a Hummer. Given the energy in a gallon of gasoline is something like 15 minutes of driving, that is 6 lbs of oil equivalent. Assuming the energy of petroleum oil = salad oil, that is 6 x 3600 kCal = 22,000 kCal calories. The average person burns 2400 kCal per day. So, a 15 minute drive is the energy equivalent of the daily food intake of 9 people.
The problem in part is numbers (more people than cars), but also consumption rates (cars burn 9 x the rate of people for every 15 minutes of driving). If one quarter of the 1 Billion Chinese start consuming as much oil as America, oil prices would skyrocket as would the heat budget. Right now they only produce 4x the body heat of the U.S. If they burned oil too, it would be 36x the body heat of the U.S. for every for every 15 minutes of driving they do. Most commodity prices would WAY MORE than double with a double in demand. The wakeup call was in 1973, the first Arab oil embargo. We were only 30% dependent on foreign oil and oil prices more than doubled. Now that we are 60% dependent, it would more than quadruple assuming this test case was typical. This is the best historical guess.
So, what would the world look like with $160/bbl oil? MY numbers are very conservative.
en.wikipedia.org
buyandhold.com |
