Tanada wrote:My main disagreement with you is the belief that intermittent power supply like what are euphemistically labeled renewable by advocates will ever supply more than perhaps 50 percent of electric grid power. The issue that comes from that is you need high process heating to preform many of the manufacturing processes you have to do to build 'renewable' power sources, even if you theorize they can supply 100 percent of the electricity demand through yet to be developed cheap storage.
We have to have a bigger tent and accept other power sources that wind/solar/tidal/wave/put your favorite in the list.
Agreed, at least mostly. But it's not as if there aren't potential solutions.
1). It's not like FF's will suddenly disappear -- even over a decade. So if there's ANY realistic indication they are disappearing or even (far more likely) seriously constrained, then humanity COULD get serious about conservation. It COULD implement a big carbon tax. It COULD make building out the green economy to save all the FF's possible a priority.
2). With any luck, within a few decades, MUCH of the first world (and perhaps global) energy demand for nonindustrial processes will be handled by green supplies.
3). Almost certainly, within a few decades, batteries will be both MUCH better and in vast supply, to resolve the intermittency problem 99+% of the time.
4). I may be wrong here, but I have to wonder if with enough batteries (and money) if the high energy demand applications for many (I'm not saying all, like big blast furnaces) industries can be supplied by having enough batteries push through enough current in parallel. So it's not that many products will be impossible to make, but they may increase in price. (So humanity can spend money on them instead of on lots of hydrocarbons, for example).
5). So that would leave a relatively small amount of super-energy-intensive industrial processes requiring burning fossil fuels. Surely with enough planning, there would be enough FF's, even on the down slope to power those (or the delta required above what green energy can at a practical cost), those products can be supplied (and be expensive, to reflect any shortage of FF's). Or perhaps that's what nuclear could be used for -- and hopefully we can be smart enough to handle the waste intelligently, or use much safer systems.
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Now, I'm not predicting this WILL happen, given the shortsightedness of humanity, population pressures, electing the politicians that let us feel the richest re disposable income, yadda yadda.
I'm just saying that with the available technology and likely technology progress curve, I don't see such problems as intractible, if they were managed by an "enlightened" society.
Given the track record of the perma-doomer blogs, I wouldn't bet a fast crash doomer's money on their predictions.