I think we are at the early stages of another major "disruptive" event. In 20-30 years fossil fuels could be obsolescent. I'm sure everyone realizes how incredibly destabilizing this will be to the world economic order among other things.
This is the only rational explanation for the illogical "maintain the status quo" arguments against wind and solar that come from the halls of power - in Australia anyway.
It's understandable in that short-sighted human perspective.
The combination of clean electricity, electric cars, and driverless cars is a holy trinity of disruption and it's sitting right on our doorstep.
Yes. They frame it as 'stop hippies from wasting our money on namby-pamby renewable fantasies' but the real concern is 'stop the tech industry from destroying the entire fossil fuel economy with disruptive innovation.'
Here's a list of jobs that renewables and EVs will destroy:
Oil/gas drillers, oil refiners, loads of car service jobs (oil changes etc.), oil/gas shippers and pipeline workers, oil/gas traders, coal miners, engine mechanics, everyone who works for a filling station, an entire internal combustion engine supply chain, ... I could keep going for a very long time. We're talking huge double-digit fractions of developed nations' economies and more than fifty percent of some countries' economies.
Imagine if someone made food or pharmaceuticals obsolete. It's like that.
Personally I suspect that if the Russia<>Trump allegations are true it's about getting an anti-renewable president in there to stall or kill this disruptive event. Russia's economy is >50% fossil fuel based and disruption of fossil fuels would destroy them. We're talking total economic collapse. They're in a worse position than Saudi Arabia since they have less cash on hand to diversify.
SA is buying loads of tech via SoftBank right now and IPOing Aramco to cash out and hand it off to people who don't see what's coming.
In 50 years we will have nearly infinite energy from solar. It will be dirt cheap, possibly almost 'too cheap to meter' at normal user scales. (Yes the same claims were made for nuclear power, but that was back when they thought fusion would be easy. If fusion had been easy those predictions would have come true. Fission has inherent costs and can't scale like this.)
It's seven percent annually, 10% for one month. (This is covered slightly better in Ars Technica.) Spring and autumn have lower energy use because less heating and cooling is needed, and wind works particularly well at those times, so the ratio is better than the annual rate at those times.
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[ 5.2 ms ] story [ 22.3 ms ] threadIt's understandable in that short-sighted human perspective.
The combination of clean electricity, electric cars, and driverless cars is a holy trinity of disruption and it's sitting right on our doorstep.
Here's a list of jobs that renewables and EVs will destroy:
Oil/gas drillers, oil refiners, loads of car service jobs (oil changes etc.), oil/gas shippers and pipeline workers, oil/gas traders, coal miners, engine mechanics, everyone who works for a filling station, an entire internal combustion engine supply chain, ... I could keep going for a very long time. We're talking huge double-digit fractions of developed nations' economies and more than fifty percent of some countries' economies.
Imagine if someone made food or pharmaceuticals obsolete. It's like that.
Personally I suspect that if the Russia<>Trump allegations are true it's about getting an anti-renewable president in there to stall or kill this disruptive event. Russia's economy is >50% fossil fuel based and disruption of fossil fuels would destroy them. We're talking total economic collapse. They're in a worse position than Saudi Arabia since they have less cash on hand to diversify.
SA is buying loads of tech via SoftBank right now and IPOing Aramco to cash out and hand it off to people who don't see what's coming.
In 50 years we will have nearly infinite energy from solar. It will be dirt cheap, possibly almost 'too cheap to meter' at normal user scales. (Yes the same claims were made for nuclear power, but that was back when they thought fusion would be easy. If fusion had been easy those predictions would have come true. Fission has inherent costs and can't scale like this.)