[Chicagoan]

What is achievable in the next twenty years (obviously assuming civilization is still here)?

[rerere]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Chicagoan', 'W')hat is achievable in the next twenty years (obviously assuming civilization is still here)?

[born2respawn]

More large scale wind farms, both inland and offshore (the UK has one in consideration that would double the amount of wind energy being generated), tidal generators going from testing to production phases and more marine energy generators.

There's an interesting design that's producing 0.5MW in operation in Scotland with a project to build a 100MW version.

There's a lot of cool new energy technology in development and close to production, fusion and zero point energy would be very nice, but it'd be like comparing current nuclear with current gas. More expensive and in the case of fusion very dangerous in the public's opinion (they think fusion = hydrogen bomb = dangerous).

PV would be nice, but northern europe just isn't the place for it, not when we've got so much wind and wave energy just waiting to be exploited.

[DvidBrent]

An advance in technology is not what is called for, but instead a willingness to let go of the cashcow called petroleum.
The only way that will happen is if business is forced to, cos there aint no more left.

The question is : Does big energy business know what they are doing?
Do they have alternatives (owned by them) ready to come out when the peak arrives and fades? Or do they not know their head from their arshole?
Which one is it?

[johnmarkos]

I believe the latter is true.

[MonteQuest]

What is achievable is to stop looking to meet demand and start looking to meet "limits." Technology is not a solution, it is a death curse. We need to move backwards in technology complexity. Find the simplest ways to do things, not the fastest or the labor saver. And when we do, use that means to make quality products that last.

[frankthetank]

Heres what we need: in no specific order...

1. Bicycles (most people have these already...most efficent machine ever?)
2. Horses (carriages)
3. Organic Farming (we could do without all the pesticides)
4. Small scale solar/wind/hydro (affordability is key)
5. Biodiesel (Transportation)
6. Smaller houses, vehicles, appetites, etc. (time to shed some pounds)
7. Wood stoves/pellet stoves (heating)
8. Sustainable timber industry (heating requires a lot of wood)

Yup. Looks like we just need to cut consumption and adopt new lifestyles (i could do this in a heartbeat...just let me keep my computer!) No alien technology needed.

Most people look @ it the wrong way. We need to cut consumption. This is why my house stays so cold in the winter/why my lights are never on/why i bike whenever possible.

[0mar]

Nothing will work for the current population base.

Look at any renewable or alternative system. They usually involve something absurd like placing hundreds of thousands of square miles of solar panels, or devoting 2-3x the amount of crops grown just for ethanol/methanol, building islands several hundred miles in area for wind farms, building a thousand nuclear power plants. Picking and choosing from this list will alleviate the dieoff for a time being. Our situation is analogous to a person with AIDS. Try as we might, we can not cure the patient. The only thing we can do is improve his/her quality of life and extend that life as well.

Eventually, we will hit another limiting resource if we do "fix" the oil problem. And we will be in the same position as well. There is nothing in a finite world that will support infinite growth. Even fusion has it's limits somewhere. It is my contention that we have already overshot the carrying capacity of earth, and the compensation time is starting in this generation and ending in 1 or 2. Looking at the problems besetting homo sapiens this era, they were caused by 1.2-1.5 billion people. What if 4-6 billion people achieved some semblance of life comparable to these 1.2 billion? It isn't difficult to see that the ecological problems would rapidly escalate. I doubt we could even predict what would happen because of the emergant nature of hundreds of thousands of factors interacting in millions of different ways.

[Chicagoan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', 'W')hat is achievable is to stop looking to meet demand and start looking to meet "limits." Technology is not a solution, it is a death curse. We need to move backwards in technology complexity. Find the simplest ways to do things, not the fastest or the labor saver. And when we do, use that means to make quality products that last.

[PhilBiker]

Oops meant PFCs not CFCs up there. They are (potentially) bad, they last forever and they are everywhere.

http://www.ewg.org/reports/pfcworld/es.php

[PhilBiker]

BTW, Rincewind, thanks a lot for a refreshingly reasoned well thought out conversation on this issue. I've read so many childish ramblings on this site in the last few weeks that I had almost given up hope that there were real intelligent people here. I respect your opinion a great deal though I don't share it. I agree that these dangerous technologies need to be treated with the respect that they deserve (which did not happen at Chernobyl and Bhopal, with disastrous results - I've never read any studies on long term cancer or DNA issues with Bhopal survivors, I wonder how bad it really was. ).

[rerere]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PhilBiker', 'B')hopal survivors, I wonder how bad it really was.

[Aaron]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Chicagoan', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', 'W')hat is achievable is to stop looking to meet demand and start looking to meet "limits." Technology is not a solution, it is a death curse. We need to move backwards in technology complexity. Find the simplest ways to do things, not the fastest or the labor saver. And when we do, use that means to make quality products that last.