by bbadwolf » Sun 04 Sep 2005, 16:31:14
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Jaymax', 'I')'m possibly one of the most confident around here that 'necessity' will be what brings around a solution to human energy issues. I'd go so far as to say, a couple of decades past peak, transport energy will be in greater supply and cost less per unit energy than it did the week-before-last.
Necessity can do a lot but cannot do the impossible. Here are some things we know.
Energy comes from ONE place, only one, the sun. In the case of hydrocarbons, a large non-renewable quantity was stashed away just waiting for us.
We know exactly how many elements there are. We know there are NO new ones to discover.
We know the amount of energy available in each chemical bond. We can exhaustively examine the potential for ALL possible chemical reactions.
We know what's in the ground. We've drilled far too many holes and examined the material, there are NO large surprises here. Nothing large could avoid detection with that many holes. Besides, we also know quite a bit about the formation of the earth, which further supports the argument there is nothing new down there (nothing big enough anyway). We can subject this to a search for all possible chemical reactions and easily see that there is no large unexploited fuel source in the ground. It simply doesn't exist. Because it can't.
We've similarly explored the entire surface of the planet. Here, we have found some things and we call them alternative energy sources. None are as abundant as fossil fuels and they are all much expensive and none of them scale very well when compared to fossil fuels.
Therefore your prediction of greater energy supply at even better prices is physically impossible, it breaks natural law! There is NO supply side solution (ok, fusion is conceivable, if unlikely). I'm in favor of optimism but we need to keep our eyes open. Little sense in attempting the impossible. Any real solution will be on the demand side and lead us in the direction of what we currently consider to be a greatly lowered standard of living.
-bbad