# Chateau de la Tobler

## Tuesday, September 06, 2005

### RE: New QOTW

Caren, your question was:

> My question is how long do you think it [oil] will take to run out?

I think I have a much different take on it than your professor. I actually don't think we will stop using gasoline anytime real soon, and possibly not within our lifetimes. According to some friends in the oil and gas industry, we really aren't going to "run out" any time in the foreseeable future. We just keep getting better and better at getting the oil and gas out of the earth, and there's a lot of it. That doesn't answer another question, however, which is: Should we keep using it? Given the pollution, ecological impact, etc., I'm pretty sure we shouldn't. At least not as much as we are now.
Your second question was:

> what are we going to use to fuel our cars or will we all switch to electric?

Bradley and I were just talking about this the other day. The biggest problem with electric cars is the size and weight of the batteries. If we ("we" in the generic sense, because obviously I am doing so much to contribute to this science...) can break the size barrier, maybe we will be using electric cars. I would put my money on hybrid cars, though. We've got that technology going, it uses both electricity and gas (we've already got the gas stations), and it's turning out to be very popular.
That's my two bits. Or whatever it's worth.

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