The Age of Renewable Energy

[Walsingham]

And you are engaging in a simple logical fallacy. The existence of climate change is utterly, completely, and gloriously irrelevant to the question of whether renewable energy can be the way forward. In fact accepting climate change as a fact makes the situation ten times worse because it imposes a gate on when improvements can occur.

 

I don't want to be rude about all this. But it's a damn shame to see so much effort going totally to waste.

 

And BTW, simply asserting that 'science will make it all OK' is a lunatic basis for policy making. If we're playing that game I say we just put everything we've got into cold fusion. Happy days. End of problem.

[pmp10]

And you are engaging in a simple logical fallacy. The existence of climate change is utterly, completely, and gloriously irrelevant to the question of whether renewable energy can be the way forward.

If you agreed that generating energy from fossil-fuels eventually leads to significant ecological damage how is it not relevant to the choice of future technology?

All that potentially cheap energy does you no good if you're going to starve during a farming collapse.

[Asol]

And you are engaging in a simple logical fallacy. The existence of climate change is utterly, completely, and gloriously irrelevant to the question of whether renewable energy can be the way forward. In fact accepting climate change as a fact makes the situation ten times worse because it imposes a gate on when improvements can occur.

 

I don't want to be rude about all this. But it's a damn shame to see so much effort going totally to waste.

 

And BTW, simply asserting that 'science will make it all OK' is a lunatic basis for policy making. If we're playing that game I say we just put everything we've got into cold fusion. Happy days. End of problem.

 

I agree with Wals here, a dose of prep will serve people far better than hoping for our science priests to deliver a black magic miracle at the zero hour. Agribusiness is the industry of converting oil to food more or less, this is hole in ethanol as a fuel solution, it takes oil to sustain those mono culture fields of corn/sugar/whatever. Oil is just far too expansive and integral of an enabler is present agriculture. Peak oil pretty much means peak food, baring some simply amazing tech and energy developments.

 

Also cynicism, skepticism and a decline in present consumption levels are not intrinsically negative or doomy, its better to face the more probably conditions and work from there.

[Wrath of Dagon]

The article is intentionally misleading, as is normal with environmentalist propaganda. The bulk of "renewable" in US is hydro and ethanol. Hydro has always been there, ethanol is mandated by law for the benefit of farmers, there's at best no energy gain from it, in fact it's possibly the stupidest policy of modern times, driving up food prices, making people in third world countries suffer and causing instability. Wind is the only true new renewable, but still depends on government subsidies and constitutes only a small percentage of the total.

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

I'm just waiting for fusion reactors. Can't be too far off, can they?

[pmp10]

I'm just waiting for fusion reactors. Can't be too far off, can they?

We have a few of those.

If you mean fusion power plants then realistic ETA is about 2050.

And that's assuming they won't be abandoned due to exaggerated expectations.