Oil is to Humanity as

a cat's Mother's Milk is to her Kittens:

 Mother's Milk is Liquid Energy flowing directly toKittens.

 Mother's Milk does Not Last Forever.

While they have Mother's Milk,

Kittens Must Learn to Hunt

or they Will Starve when Mother's Milk isGone.

Earth's Oil is Mother's Milk for Humanity:

 It is Liquid Energy flowing directly fromEarth.

 

Almost Half of Earth's Easy-Flowing Oil is near thePersian Gulf -

- the Earth's Sweet Flowing Breast

 

 where Humanity's Hungry Mouth isPressed.

 

Earth's Oil - like Mother's Milk - will Not LastForever:

By 2040 A.D. Easy-Flowing Oil will be Gone-

- By 2012 A.D. shortages will besevere.

While it has Easy-Flowing Oil,

Humanity Must Learn to Hunt New Energy Sources andDelivery Systems.

The only EnergySources that could give 10 billion people the standard of living ofthe USA are:

Nuclear Reactors;and

Massive Space-BasedSolar Energy Collectors.

They could give Humanity enough Energy for the nextMillion Years.

Of the two, Nuclear Reactors could be built faster, cheaper,and easier, so:

Humanity's next Energy Source should be NuclearReactors.

Using total Earth energy reserves in Terawatt-years,according to M. Taube, in his book Evolution of Matter and Energy ona Cosmic and Planetary Scale (Springer-Verlag 1985), the number ofyears that 10^10 people could consume energy at the present USA percapita rate, a consumption rate of about 1,000 Terawatt-years/year,is:
Reserves                     Duration               (Terawatt-years)                  (years)Oil                   850                          1   Gas                   550                          1   Methane             1,500                          2   Coal                7,000                          7   Uranium           1.9 X 10^9               2,000,000   (1/1000 of                                             Earth supply)                                          Thorium           7.9 x 10^9               8,000,000   (1/1000 of                                             Earth supply)                                          Deuterium         1.9 x 10^9               2,000,000   (1/1000 of                                             ocean supply)                                          Lithium           1.9 x 10^9               2,000,000   (source of                                            tritium)
As to solar energy, the total solar energy received by Earthis about 109,000 Terawatt-years/year so that 10^10 people couldconsume energy at the present USA per capita rate by using about 1%(one percent) of the solar energy received by Earth. This could bedone, for example, by building a lot of orbiting solar energycollection dishes and beaming the energy to Earth.

The total geothermal heat flux is about 66 Terawatt-years/year,and the total tidal energy is about 3 Terawatt-years/year, so thatthose sources would be inadequate to support 10^10 people consumingenergy at the present USA per capita rate.

An Energy Distribution System to wean Humanity from Oilcould be based on Hydrogen.

 

Nuclear Reactors could produce Hydrogen and Fresh Waterfrom Sea Water,

so that

Construction ofNuclear Hydrogen-Fresh Water plants MUST begin NOW

or

Humanity will spend the nextfew years Fighting Wars over increasingly scarce Oil, and then gointo a Dark Age.

 

 

 

This Oil and Kittens page is on the web at http://www.tony5m17h.net/OilMilk.html

and a pdf version is on the web athttp://www.tony5m17h.net/MilkOil.pdf

- it was written by Frank D. (Tony) Smith,Jr., on 26 May 2003.

Mother Cat and Kittens image from aPurina ONE web page.

Hunting Cat image from aCats in Art - In Antiquity web page, whichsays: "... This mosaic portrait of a hunting cat and his catch wasdiscovered during excavations of the houses in Pompeii ... c. 1stcentury A.D., ... Italy ...".

Earth from Space images from aNASA Goddard web page, which says: "...Apollo 11 view of Earth taken shortly after lift off on 16 July 1969from a distance of 180,000 km. Most of Africa can be seen at thecenter of this image, as well as parts of Europe and western Asia,partly covered by clouds, and most of the Middle East. Apollo 11 wasin translunar insertion at the time of this photograph, on its way tothe historic first moon walk on 20 July. The Earth is 12,740 km indiameter. North is at 11:00. (Apollo 11, AS11-36-5355) ...".

Persian Gulf Oil Map from The Times Atlas of WorldHistory, Hammond 1993.

Oil Production Chart adapted from ScientificAmerican, March 1998.

The phrase "... the Earth's Sweet FlowingBreast where Humanity's Hungry Mouth is Pressed ..." is paraphrasedfrom the poem Trees, by (Alfred) Joyce Kilmer. According to theEncyclopaediaBritannica (1987 Fifteenth Edition): "..."Trees" ... appeared in Poetry magazine in 1913. ... He was ...b[orn] Dec. 6, 1886 ... d[ied] July 30, 1918 ...educated at Rutgers and Columbia ...[and was]...[k]illed in action during World War I ...[and]...posthumously awarded the Croix de Guerre ...".