Originally Posted by xyzdonna  Hi Geof,
Yes, but you're burning carbon. .... |
Yes, I do know what coal is. No Green technology is cheaper and no Green technology exists in the same reserves. What I am getting at is the the entire world economy, and indeed the very survival of billions of people, is crucially dependent on abundant cheap energy; fossil fuels. Coal and oil provide about equal amounts of energy and combined they provide many times the energy currently obtained from Green sources even when you include Hydro and Nuclear as being Green. To replace only half of the energy currently obtained from coal it would be necessary to at least double both the number of current Hydro installations and the number of current Nuclear installation. Designing and building both Hydro dams and Nuclear facilities takes multpile decades even if sufficient locations are found to place them. It is not going to happen quickly enough to obtain the pontificated CO2 emission reductions said to be essential within 20 or 50 years to avoid catastrophe. Never mind that it is not going to happen; if by some strange fluke the needed dams and reactors could be built they would result in an enormous surge in CO2 emission due to their construction. The production of cement for concret generates huge amounts of CO2, you can probably Google and find out the number; dams and reactor buildings use enormous amounts of concrete.
The bottom line is that alternate sources of CO2 free energy are simply not available. We cannot wave a magic wand, stop using fossil fuels and blythely continue with our energy intensive society. And we cannot suddenly cut energy use in half because that will create even greater social catastrophe in the form of mass starvation. Cheap abundant energy is essential for cheap abundant food promptly distributed from its source to where it is needed.
There is no avoiding continued, and increased CO2 emissions for a long time into the future. If this is going to cause worldwide climate and weather upheavals (most of which I think are nonsensical predictions) we are going to have to adapt to them. It could be easier than adapting to having a good portion of the world's population starve to death over a few years.