What happens to power boating when we run out of oil?

50 years is a long way out. Also they're developing better and better ways to extract oil where they could not before, like from shale. At that time, Nuclear power might even be a viable option, who knows......remember that the diesel engine was origionally developed and did run on cooking/ vegetable oil.

There are already nuclear reactors being tested by USA National Laboratories that are designed to power from 5 to 20 homes that are completely self contained ,self regulating and maintenance free. You just bury one in the back yard and your good to go for 20 years. Not a big leap to see them in private yachts some day.

As to the guy who mentioned using water by splitting the 2 hydrogen atoms from the 1 oxygen atom. That process uses more energy than the fuels provide. So you have a net loss of energy. Don't believe every thing you see on YouTube.

Hydrogen will be a major fuel of the future. But you need a additional energy source (nuclear, wind, solar, fossil fuels) so you have the additional energy needed to split water molecules.

NO. The first diesel engine invented by Rudolph Diesel ran on cooking oil (peanut oil), not Diesel fuel as it hadn't even been discovered yet.

On February 27, 1892, Diesel filed for a patent at the Imperial Patent Office in Germany. Within a year, he was granted Patent No. 67207 for a "Working Method and Design for Combustion Engines . . .a new efficient, thermal engine." With contracts from Frederick Krupp and other machine manufacturers, Diesel began experimenting and building working models of his engine. In 1893, the first model ran under its own power with 26% efficiency, remarkably more than double the efficiency of the steam engines of his day. Finally, in February of 1897, he ran the "first diesel engine suitable for practical use, which operated at an unbelievable efficiency of 75%.

" Diesel demonstrated his engine at the Exhibition Fair in Paris, France in 1898. This engine stood as an example of Diesel's vision because it was fueled by peanut oil - the "original" biodiesel. He thought that the utilization of a biomass fuel was the real future of his engine. He hoped that it would provide a way for the smaller industries, farmers, and "common folk" a means of competing with the monopolizing industries, which controlled all energy production at that time, as well as serve as an alternative for the inefficient fuel consumption of the steam engine. As a result of Diesel's vision, compression ignited engines were powered by a biomass fuel, vegetable oil, until the 1920's and are being powered again, today, by biodiesel."

The idea of the peak in oil supply being reached is not a new one and has been written about, by highly qualified people at both ends of the argument.

New sources are closer at hand each time we find a better way to access the Earths oceans. Considering that the major finds are on land, with possibly 20% offshore, much of it still in the "discovered" phase, not the "production" phase, then I don't think we will run out anytime soon.

More will be done to find and then recover the oil lying under most the Earth, which of course is in the Oceans.
Meantime, buy into companies that have good reputations in the exploration side as well as production. I started that in the 1990's when oil was US$20 pbbl.

Electric motors powered by yet-to-be-invented graphene batteries with a greater energy/weight ratio than petroleum, charged by land based infrastructure harnessing solar, wind, wave, etc energy...?

Tesla is a "proven" ???

Not to derail the thread, but have you actually driven one??? I have! As someone who appreciates engineering and mechanical art, I would buy a Tesla in a heartbeat. I'm VERY comfortable that longevity and reliability won't be an issue. Matter of fact, with interchangeable packs, these things will outlast all of us.

We're not running out of oil any time soon. It WILL become more expensive as it becomes harder to extract but with private yachts already topping out over 500' I doubt if the largest yacht owners will care.

The new infrastructure that will be needed to extract existing and future discoveries will be expensive to build, no doubt.
However, not much more expensive than it is and will be to re-new the existing infrastructures that were built decades, some more than a generation ago.

These pipelines, refineries, offshore rigs etc,, some of which are in inhospitable areas, many leaking thousands of gallons a day are an "elephant in the room" that no one is talking about.

I agree the new technology, whether electric, solar, nuclear will be the future, but many will be in partnership with the use of oil and possibly the companies producing it.

I don't understand the logic that batteries will solve much, unless they are made and charged without using the same power sources used today? If it cost $X to produce a battery, using $X in cost and X in amount of oil to manufacture then all that has changed is public perception.
So I plug in my car overnight to get charged via a power station that is burning fossil fuels? Check what the car is made from, petroleum products, unless it came out a "renewable plantation pine forest."

Do let us know where you'll get the energy to refine all that Al, Si, and Fe cause it ain't coming from H2.

-David

Please let me know where you'll get the H2.

thx.