When will the World run out of coal and oil?

Question

When is the World expected to run out of coal and oil. Me and my mate have been arguing about when it will run out so if the answer goes my way I can rub it in his face.

Thanks!

Answer 1

There is a lot of oil in the earth.  Right now there is tons of oil in the Gulf of Mexico.  Our own country blocked us from drilling it, but Cuba has let China come in and drill for it.  There will be a lot there to last for many, many years.  Some places that have oil are difficult to drill.

Answer 2

You mean natural coal, right? We can still make many organic fuels more efficient than coal like Ethanol (is that how you spell it?:) ) and others.. but oil, the black gold could sit for ever in some places because it is just to little or to expensive and to hard to dig out? But the oil fields that are being used or are going to be used in the near future if prices go up some more might go out in a hundred years but this depends on the rate at witch they with draw oil out, if we continue drawing out oil in our current rate we will drain them in shorter than that? :)

Answer 3

Estimates are over blown, for economical reasons but we now think its about 15 years, if there is no further growth in world economy, but India china, Asia, Africa, are all developing, as world population grows

Have a look:

http://www.ecosphere.co.nz/earth-clock-w...

Hope this helps. Cool

edit:

What the others have said is correct about the oil reserves

But the interesting thing is the reserve, does no take into account the problems of extraction, we are no at the end of the easy stuff, in the Middle East, many wells have been closed even though only 2/3 of the total has been extracted, the longer a field is worked the harder it becomes. Respect to you guys. Ok

Answer 4

For the last 50 or so years, the Earth has been scheduled to run out of oil in about 100 years and coal about 1000 years or more.  These figures have not changed. It suggests that while there has to be a finite limit to the amount of oil and coal reserves, new reserves continue to be found to offset the oil and coal that have been used.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserve...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal

Answer 5

I think its around 2050 that we will run out of such resources. Not much earlier than that.

Answer 6

oil maybe about 70 years from now. coal will last another 300 years. We need more nuclear power plants and wind power. I think obama will not allow nuclear power plants. The rest of the the world gets 50% of there power from nuclear usa only gets 20% of its power from nuclear. we are way behide the world.