[ExI] energy modelling

[Eugen Leitl]

On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 09:40:07PM -0400, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:

> ### But oil has cheap substitutes, so there is hardly any downside to

Oil has no cheap substitutes.

> its running out. Synfuels from coal provide a technological ceiling on

A synfuel plant is 10-100 GUSD and takes at least a decade
to build. Oh, and there's no coal -- China (a net importer,
with over >50% world coal demand) is already suffering
from insufficient coal availability. 70% of China's
electricity is from coal, about 50 GW demand gap is expected
this summer.

> the price of gasoline, and the only reason for higher prices would be
> purely social, e.g. mass environmentalist hysteria.

Wake up and smell http://theoildrum.com/
We're running on empty.
 
> We are not running out of energy, by a long shot. We might be running
> out of common sense.

We've had peak common sense in 1975 or thereabouts. It went
downhill since.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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