Riprion wrote:
The plug-in hybrid will, in fact, invalidate this statement.
The plug-in hybrid would mitigate, but are you aware that the battery technology is insufficient at this time?
I didn't say plug-in hybrids would solve the problem, I said it would invalidate the statement that you can't shift to wind overnight to power your car. It absolutely will invalidate that statement because if you power your car by electricity, it won't matter where the electricity comes from whether coal, natgas, or wind.
Battery technology is insufficient at this time for a total electric vehicle, but that is mainly because of range. This is solved by the ancillary engine. These strategies might only mitigate, but how many mitigations are required before the problem is solved. You can't simply look at each mitigation in isolation and summarily claim "Oh well that alone won't solve the problem."
As far as pollution, yeah you'll have that. What are we trying to prevent? Are we trying to prevent economic collapse because of peak oil, climate change due to CO2 emmissions, or all pollution? Even geothermal causes arsenic pollution, but most would claim that is still better than AGW. IOW, there is always a tradeoff.
The fact that Bolivia has the world's largest reserves is a little disconcerting, but China is increasing production through brine extraction and there is actually a lot of lithium in seawater, just at low concentrations. Good thing there is a lot of seawater. This may not be economically viable at this time, but as demand increases SW extraction will become more viable.
All of the segments you refer to are minuscule in comparison to the total energy market. According to the US DOE renewables including nuclear, account for less than 20% of total energy production. Nice history of renewables in that link. We are a long way off from displacing fossil fuels and demand continues to grow.
Yes they are miniscule, but increasing. All you are saying is that there is a problem. We wouldn't have this discussion is nuclear supplied 80%. There are now 6 reactors being built with more in the works (that's about a 5% increase in capacity). The same thing with geothermal although it's not nearly close to supplying enough power yet. The fact that they are now increasing is yet another mitigating factor pushing the crisis furthur into the future.
How do we get this to happen in a free market? Sans regulation if you and I are competing in a free market place, I am doing everything I can to eat your lunch. No Marquis of Queensbury rules - biting, kicking, eye gauging are perfectly acceptable in a free market. If the law of the jungle is survival of the fittest, then in a free market each competitor should expect no quarter from his rivals and persistantly seek dominion or be dominated. Any regulation to the contrary would be a market constraint.
This is a gross mischaraterization of the free market. It's like saying that in a free society you can go around shooting people. Even in a market entities have rights and it is the role of government to protect those rights from infringement by others. That doesn't invalidate the concept of a free market.
Again this is the steady state, unconstrained macro economic idea. But again using Bartlett’s presentation a simple growth rate of 5% per year results in a doubling every ten years! Let’s make the wild assumption we have ¾ of the total amount the earth ever had of fossil fuels still remaining in the ground, we would smoke it in 20 years. Do you still think the supply/demand curve is a flat line?
I never said it was a flat line, but it is also not a clean exponential line either. That exponential line is actually a saw tooth of surges and dips trending up exponentially. Besides, I have already explained why Bartlett's analogy is flawed, and the current economic crisis has drastically reduced energy consumption which would seem to invalidate his hypothesis because it reveals that the relationship between population growth and energy use is not a constant.
I don’t think we agree on population growth I am thinking 5% per year, or a doubling of population every 10 years. And while most of these people will be born out in the cold so to speak, they represent a vast under satisfied demand.
Doubling of population in ten years is flat out wrong. The world has never seen anything near 5% growth which also invalidates Bartlett.
"The fastest rates of world population growth (above 1.8%) were seen briefly during the 1950s then for a longer period during the 1960s and 1970s (see graph). According to population projections, world population will continue to grow until around 2050. The 2008 rate of growth has almost halved since its peak of 2.2% per year, which was reached in 1963. World births have levelled off at about 137-million-per-year, since their peak at 163-million in the late 1990's, and are expected to remain constant. However, deaths are only around 56 million per year, and are expected to increase to 90 million by the year 2050. Since births outnumber deaths, the world's population is expected to reach about 9 billion by the year 2040"
I can tell you that I would not have pulled the trigger on my small deal without the state and federal subsidies I received. Even with the subsidies the deal was upside down. Without market intervention, even at this late date alternatives do not make sense.
No offense, but I think the subsidization of residential PV is probably one of the worst government energy policies yet. If the gov't is going to subsidize renewables, why should they piss money away on the most expensive option? All of the subsidy dollars that are spent on residential PV would be better spent on technologies that are at least in the ballpark of grid parity. I would say start with nuclear then wind and lastly solar concentration collectors (which are planned to reach parity in the next ten years). But instead the spend the money on PV and the PVs that are installed are the cheapest least efficient PVs that cost more than 5x grid and that is with ideal insolation. Then they are placed where the insolation is not ideal, maybe a tree casts an intermittant shadow or the inclination is not ideal or not directly south-facing. All of which increases the cost/kWh. The argument that you are saving on transmission losses is also bunk because those losses average 7% and the losses from DC->AC conversion range between 4-12%. The majority PVs being installed are already obsolete in the 15% efficiency range, while 24% is the current maximum (residentially available) with 40% being the top efficiency that they put on spacecraft (much closer to bringing PV to parity) Those 40% should be readily available in the next 10 years, but that will only be halfway or a third of the way through the lifecycle of the crappy PVs so adoption will be slowed because of the previous government intervention. If you haven't completed your ROI would you rip down the ineffcient PVs for new expensive superefficient PVs, or would your wait until they needed to be replaced? This is exactly the kind of unintended consequence that government interventions cause, that are avoided by the market.
In this instance running out of fossil fuels would hinder the market, and you are correct that at some point, some form of equilibrium will be restored. But what if the alternatives do not arise in time to avert catastrophe? We have a truly massive market, and the corrections will wash away the very foundations of society.
We already have the alternatives available to avoid disaster; the main one is nuclear. Sure there are problems, but what is worse, a little nuclear waste or the collapse of society. Hmm, I think I'll take my chances with nuclear plants. Here again the rapidity with which the catastrophe approaches is based on inaccurate population predictions or the notion that we will be blindsided and wake up one day to an announcement that there is no more oil, coal, or natgas. We have over 200 years of coal reserves in this country alone.
Here is where we differ. If we have your free market why would I even buy the more costly alternative? I wouldn’t. I would only buy once the alternative becomes a value.
Actually you yourself have disproved this statement. Even with the subsidies you were underwater so to speak with the solar installation. This leads to Mises and his claim that every transaction in the market is rational, but only to the people involved in the transaction. This holds true even if the transaction doesn't seem rational to me. The value gained isn't simply and economic one but also one of self-satisfaction or w/e. Either way, you incurred a cost because there was some non-tangible value.
The other instance would be the adoption of expensive energy technologies in remote places. The reason solar is not economically viable in cities is because of the grid, but in rural Africa where there are no power lines solar looks like a good idea. I just don't see why the government should encourage the adoption of expensive technologies in areas where there are less expensive alternatives even within the realm of renewables.
I think about the shortage of whale oil before petroleum and fractionating distillation were introduced.
Ahh the old whale oil chestnut, this is completely inapplicable because kerosene was an incredibly new technology at the time of the whale oil shortage whereas we currently have mature alternatives such as nuclear that simply need to be adopted in a more widespread manner. We aren't sitting around waiting for fusion, which would be far more analogous to the whale oil shortage.
Also, if you think you can regulate your way out of shortages of anything......
. ”Laws will protect me. But no regulation shall be allowed to abridge my rights.” And how does the government protect your rights in the market place? Ayn Rand used the “anti dog eat dog” slogan; shall we use this one or come up with a new one? The truth is if government is involved - you have something less than a free market.