[ExI] Wind, solar could provide 99.9% of ALL POWER by 2030

Eugen Leitl eugen at leitl.org
Sun Jan 20 21:14:58 UTC 2013


On Fri, Jan 18, 2013 at 09:48:01PM -0800, spike wrote:

> I may have found a problem in my own line of reasoning.
> 
> So what if things work out exactly as I envision?  What if... society
> recognizes the Red Queen effect in the remaining productive oil wells and

Do you see any evidence for that? Not me.

> fracking, where we need to run faster and faster just to stay where we are,
> and so we start to get serious about alternatives: we build nukes, we
> install ground-based solar, we build enormous wind farms, we manage to not
> get into wars over dwindling fossil fuels, we do all things needed to
> transition to renewables, in a period of about 30 years.  

It's too late. A number of people are going to die, and I doubt they'll
go gently into the good night.
 
> OK, best case, what if we manage to do that?  Then we have a generation
> which is pouring heart and soul into just trying to equal what we always
> took for granted.  We had these grand visions of orbiting space stations and
> moon colonies and all that stuff that never came to pass, but the now
> generation would not have the luxury of grand visions.  It would have only
> small visions of struggling to break even.  If they are ambitious and

http://www.reddit.com/r/lostgeneration

> successful, their world will be a lot like their grandfather's world, only
> not as good in some important ways.  The energy is scarcer, they need to
> think carefully about how they live their lives.  They don't really have the
> option of the wild careless stuff we used to do, like drag racing our
> Detroits and all the wild dissipations our generation enjoyed.
> 
> Of course some things will be crazy better: their virtual worlds and such,
> their computer gaming.
> 
> My vision for the future is coping with gradually tightening energy sources
> and doing cool stuff anyway, replacing fossil fuels with renewables and
> such, but there might be a serious flaw in that line of reasoning.  What if
> the now generation has only small visions to dream, only break-even as a
> goal?  Will that work?  Will they take up the burden of struggling to
> maintain what we were just given?



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