[KaiserJeep]

Right at this point, I have more wealth in the house which we paid off some months ago. It does appear I can sell for 8X what I paid some 29 years ago. Which is enough cash to buy a really nice place in Wisconsin. I am waiting to find out how grandmotherly the wife feels next month, we will fly out Saturday and spend three weeks with the then month-old grandkids. I have a hunch she may shuffle her present priorities.

So the plan would be, pay off the new place, save some for taxes, and decide what one does when retired.

[StarvingLion]

KaiserJeep wants world communism (its already here) so bad, he can't even bother doing the simple calculation to determine whether the worlds largest solar installation (topaz in Kalifornia) used as a template could power the world:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topaz_Solar_Farm

Topaz Solar Farm 1100GWh/year (cost $2.44 billion).

Global energy consumption (2012): 155,500,000 GWh.

Number of Topaz farms to power world = 155,500,000/1100 = 141,363.6

Total cost = 141,363.6 x $2,440,000,000 = $344,927,180,000,000

Total Global household wealth (Credit Suisse) = $263,000,000,000,000

Everyone in the world must give up everything they own - then 30% more - just for the solar farms. Doesnt even take into account storage and transmission.

And this madness is taken seriously by KaiserJeep because some "expert" said so...you know like that fraud Elon Musk.

[Ulenspiegel]

Starving Brain,

you have the talent to produce a lot of crap in a few lines. Well done.

[KaiserJeep]

Who said anything about powering the world? This study was just the USA. If you want to dispute it, pick a state by clicking on the map, then read about the energy sources, and then see if you think they did the math correctly or not.

I just realized I didn't give you the link to the original online stub article. Here it is:

http://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/energy/renewables/taking-the-us-to-100-percent-renewable-energy-state-by-state

Now believe me, the IEEE is an organization grounded in facts. I don't believe they would publish foolishness.

[Ulenspiegel]

Even for the world it is doable:

1) one has not to provide the current/future amount of primary energy, only final energy.

2) even final energy contains waste heat (ICE!!!)

3) 2/3 of most heating demand could be covered by "enviromental" energy by heat pumps.

4) only an idiot assumes 2400 USD per kW for PV, it is already at 1000 USD and still decreasing.

With correct assumptions the problem is at least one order of magnitude smaller than claimed by Starving Brain, and no problem to finance it, esp. when we have only to pay for the differential costs, which even may be negative.

[Zanstel]

...when we have only to pay for the differential costs, which even may be negative.

This is an important point.
When you see numbers at national or worldwide scale, all are huge. But numbers are huge already. From a relative point or differential costs we can see that are not impossible and sometimes are even better than today numbers.

[ROCKMAN]

"From a relative point or differential costs we can see that are not impossible and sometimes are even better than today numbers." Which obviously explains why the world has abandoned hydrocarbons and runs primarily on alternative energy sources.

Might want to rethink some of those assumption. Just saying: even while one can try to defend those assumptions one still has to justify them to the fact the overwhelming amount of energy consumed on the planet is from fossil fuels. If those assumptions have failed for many decades and continue to appear invalid today (especially in light of decreased oil prices, low coal prices and an expanding global market for NG) when will they become impactful factors?

[Outcast_Searcher]

People who talk about health care savings due to less air pollution, reduced smoking, less exposure to cancer causing materials, etc. etc. rarely discuss the impact on pension funds. Reducing the number of premature deaths means that people will on average collect a pension longer. Eliminating the health costs associated with a premature death doesn't necessarily translate into an overall savings in health care as it is merely postponing a death that may involve just as much health care expenditures as would have been entailed by the premature death that was avoided.

100% right. Advocates of any given idea often throw out a single statistic (health care "savings" due to less 'X' is a prime example). I believe it's deliberate. With ten seconds of honest reflection, I can't see how ANY reasonably educated person wouldn't notice ANY of the obvious examples of the offsetting (or far worse) costs you pointed out.

Of course, they can't mention THOSE, since that might detract from the political attractiveness of the idea.

In general, if ANY change allows people to live much longer on average -- if society doesn't drastically reduce its net reproduction rate, the net change is an economic fiasco that overwhelms reasonable solutions.

The current pension disaster in general is a great example of that. Look at current or projected life expectancies vs. those of the 50's, for example.

[Timo]

Both problems only need heaps of money to solve. Too bad all of you are still working, unlike us retired folks. Taxes are gonna have to be raised so my lifestyle is maintained.

Snark aside, how much is the projected cost of implementation versus the projected cost of BAU?

I ask that with no snark intended. I'm actually quite serious with that question. What is the value of continued life on this planet?

[KaiserJeep]

"From a relative point or differential costs we can see that are not impossible and sometimes are even better than today numbers." Which obviously explains why the world has abandoned hydrocarbons and runs primarily on alternative energy sources.

Might want to rethink some of those assumption. Just saying: even while one can try to defend those assumptions one still has to justify them to the fact the overwhelming amount of energy consumed on the planet is from fossil fuels. If those assumptions have failed for many decades and continue to appear invalid today (especially in light of decreased oil prices, low coal prices and an expanding global market for NG) when will they become impactful factors?

RM, there are after all, infrastructure costs. Consider the amount of capital and embodied energy that are represented by 690,000 retail gasoline stations, dozens of oil refineries and hundreds of factories making things with petrochemicals. Not to mention, tens of thousands - or perhaps it is hundreds of thousands - or millions - of oil wells, plus pipelines, drilling rigs, etc.

If we had to implement all that stuff TODAY we could not afford to do so. Nor would we, knowing that oil/gas is rapidly running out. But we are benefitting still from every infrastructure dollar invested since John D. Rockefeller formed the corporation called Standard Oil.

Even if we can find a reason and the means to re-purpose some of that stuff, we are going to be energy-poor compared to the last few generations, because of our unaffordable infrastructure needs for energy production in whatever form(s). If you build a place to live, you want to insulate the he!! out of it, because gas won't always be plentiful and cheap.

It occurs to me, when I think darker thoughts, that is the real reason our economy has been deliberately slowed down the way it has been over the last few decades. Simply going slower lessens the damage when the crash finally happens. Likewise if your expectations have been set by decades of belt tightening and ever higher taxation, you will scream less when your worst fears in that regard come to pass.

...and sometimes I just cuss at the idiots in government "service", because I know who they really serve.

[GHung]

This entire subject is tantamount to whistling past the graveyard. Firstly, none of the so-called 'renewables' being discussed are "100% renewable". Secondly, we have neither the political will nor the economic capacity to eliminate fossil fuels from our energy mix. I00% renewable industrial scale agriculture? Electrical grids? Transportation? Jeez, even our ability to trash our environment isn't 100% renewable.

Limits to living on a finite planet rule all. Humans took the wrong evolutionary path long ago in regards to their relationship to their environment.

[ROCKMAN]

Timo - A valid point IMHO. OTOH you make the assumption that those who would pay the price in the long run for trying to maintain BAU are the same folks who would have to pony up the money to change our direction. Not a valid assumption IMHO. We are not the collective of the three Musketeers...we are not "all for one and one for all".

[KaiserJeep]

Both problems only need heaps of money to solve. Too bad all of you are still working, unlike us retired folks. Taxes are gonna have to be raised so my lifestyle is maintained.

Snark aside, how much is the projected cost of implementation versus the projected cost of BAU?

I ask that with no snark intended. I'm actually quite serious with that question. What is the value of continued life on this planet?

Well, honestly: I have long believed that it is both preferable and cheaper to move off-planet into habitats in space.

My solution saves a few human individuals and our species and our food species. Almost all of the 7.3 Billion humans die with the planetary ecology which is already circling the drain faster and faster.

I wish I could say I see some hope, but I don't see any. 6.3+ billions of overshoot humans is not a survivable problem. If they were buffalo, we could slaughter them in place and let their rotting carcasses enrich the topsoil. But they are not buffalo, they will be doing their level best to put YOU in the ground, or on their dinner plate, and in the process all will die.

[Timo]

Timo - A valid point IMHO. OTOH you make the assumption that those who would pay the price in the long run for trying to maintain BAU are the same folks who would have to pony up the money to change our direction. Not a valid assumption IMHO. We are not the collective of the three Musketeers...we are not "all for one and one for all".

Touche, RM. Actually, though, I wasn't making any assumptions at all. I posed the question strictly for political purposes, to pose the question in terms that the dumbed-down politicians who deny any problem at all might be able to understand. Granted, there aren't any of those dumbed-down politicians lurking in the background here at PO, unless Ibon or Pops is actually Sen. Inhofe, or one of his staffers. In that case, the question stands.

To the larger point, though, there are some people out there (I assume) who have the ability to influence those politicians in the decisions they make. So, how about it Sarah Palin? How much is the future of Momma Grizzly's grandbabies worth?

Do the Koch brothers have any kids? I'm guessing not. That helps explain why they don't give a fu*k about what they're doing to our future. They'll be dead billionaires. Why should they care about the future?

[ROCKMAN]

Just teasing you a little bit. LOL. And yes: there are folks out there who have a tremendous influence on politicians...the votersIMHO. And isn't that the real problem? IOW the system is driven by their collective knowledge...or lack there of. Again it doesn't matter if Sarah or Hillary have a $billion war chest: the public, as a whole, is going to vote in its own best interest. Or at least what it perceives as its best interest.

[sunweb]

Not about the world. Elitist, colonialism for others' resources.

Jacobson’s first paper proposed:
Starting in 2012 for 50% of the world’s energy we would need:
2111112 machines a year for 18 years
which is over 578 machines a day for 18 years

which is over 24 each hour, each day, 7 days a week for 18 years

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewab ... he-world/0
and
http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... gy-by-2030

In an email discussion with the second author he proposed that since we do it with cars; we can do it with “renewables”. So all the mining, processing, manufacturing, transporting, installing, two or three times a year maintenance. This is green? This is sustainable? This is renewable?
Solar and wind energy collecting devices have an industrial history. It is important to understand the industrial infrastructure and the environmental results for the components of the solar energy collecting devices so we don’t designate them with false labels such as green, renewable or sustainable.
This is an essay challenging ‘business as usual’. If we teach people that these solar devices are the future of energy without teaching the whole system, we mislead, misinform and create false hopes and beliefs.
I have provided both charts and videos for the solar cells, modules, aluminum from ore, aluminum from recycling, aluminum extrusion, inverters, batteries and copper.
Please note each piece of machinery you see in each of the videos has its own
industrial interconnection and history.

http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2015/04/so ... cture.html
http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2014/11/pr ... wrong.html

[StarvingLion]

Solar installations are supposed to be getting rapidly much cheaper due to genius phds but they are not.

The largest solar installation currently in construction, Mid American's Solar Star, began construction in 2013 and goes online this year, with 579 MW at a cost of $2.74 billion. On a per watt basis, it is significantly more expensive than Topaz.

So, 4 more years of fossil consumption down the drain. Congrats, geniuses.

I'd better call the nuke experts and see how many 100's of trillions of dollars they need to save the world.

[Zanstel]

Might want to rethink some of those assumption. Just saying: even while one can try to defend those assumptions one still has to justify them to the fact the overwhelming amount of energy consumed on the planet is from fossil fuels. If those assumptions have failed for many decades and continue to appear invalid today (especially in light of decreased oil prices, low coal prices and an expanding global market for NG) when will they become impactful factors?

The renewables has been changing very fast. A decade ago, renewable wasn't enough cheap and oil too much.
Now it begins to show how electrícity, and a couple years from now total numbers will begin to rise up renewable power a lot while fossil will stagnate and going down.

It will be a fast change like Internet or mobile industry. On 2050, most of our energy will be renewable.
Perhaps will be a small window when renewable will not grow enough to cover the replacement. That is a open posibility if fossil drops too fas, but in this scenarios fossils will become more expensive and that boost the renewable adoption to even faster growth.

Of course the change will begin on the easiest markets to replace. For example, electric vehicles are nearly ready to replace a lot of cars. Electric cars are a lot more efficient, so we don't need so much energy. Other heavy vehicles are a lot more complex to adapt to renewable sources, like planes. If we could only use syntetic fuels like hydrogen we will need so much energy from renewable as was needed from fossils on first place.

Perhaps air industry will react desinging better planes with lower consumption. Perhaps more air traffic will change to other forms of transport like fast trains. Perhaps, if the change is not enough fast, the traffic will recede.

[Ulenspiegel]

"From a relative point or differential costs we can see that are not impossible and sometimes are even better than today numbers." Which obviously explains why the world has abandoned hydrocarbons and runs primarily on alternative energy sources.

Might want to rethink some of those assumption. Just saying: even while one can try to defend those assumptions one still has to justify them to the fact the overwhelming amount of energy consumed on the planet is from fossil fuels. If those assumptions have failed for many decades and continue to appear invalid today (especially in light of decreased oil prices, low coal prices and an expanding global market for NG) when will they become impactful factors?

Rockman,

the replacement of fossil fuel capacity for the generation of electricity, where BTW oil and therfore oilprice is no factor, is already so fast that large companies with too high share of FF are in trouble. You only have to look at the big utilities in Europe, some are real zombies.

To use as reference point a year decades ago is a useless exercise, FF capacity competes with RE at the price level of 2015, and there is no hope that the situation will improve for FF, quite contrary.

Other point is of course, that external costs are not payed for with a price of 70 USD/barrel, so the current advantage of FFs is to a certain extend a book-keeping trick, not a fair assessment of macro economic costs which have to be paid in the long run.

For me the only interesting question is whether the rate of change is sufficient, IMHO one can not longer dispute the fact that it is happening.

[StarvingLion]

Here is the easiest prediction of all time: Kalifornia will abandon renewables within the next 10 years because it will not be able to maintain the urban sprawl. Whatever IP from the semiconductor biz not already stolen will be transferred to China in exchange for "cheap" fission reactor powered electricity perhaps sitting on barges in the ocean. Intel is no more. The only objective of those clowns in the cities is to become just like India...an ever increasingly dense overpopulated cesspool of corruption.

Lets face reality, miniaturization of the transistor did not lead to any productivity gains...only a bunch of people who design t-shirt graphics and code websites.