[ocschwar]

"Cool, and what's your proposal for an alternative energy source to power modern civilisation?"

We have several alternatives.

The only problem they have is that most of them are difficult to store in a self-contained moving vehicle that turns rubber wheels to move on flat blacktop.

So, we increase reliance on vehicles that turn steel wheels on steel tracks, and get their power from overhead wires.

Next question?

[4ad]

Most of the electrical energy comes from burning things that create carbon-dioxide as a side product. The only real alternative is fission, and the public opinion against nuclear is even worse than against oil. How do you solve this problem?

Getting people and things moved by train is a great idea, but in the grand scheme of things we're dependant on oil for so many other things.

[ianai]

Recreate the nuclear industry.

[Retric]

Well over 40% of US electricity comes from things that don't create carbon dioxide. Exact numbers are hard to come by because a lot of solar power for example never ends up on the electric grid.

[4ad]

I know this is very hard for this forum to consider at times, but the world is not only the US, and the question about what do with coal, oil, and gas is a global, not a US problem. United States is a somewhat lucky outlier when it comes to energy production. Unfortunately, even in other currently lucky nations, the public sentiment is strongly against nuclear power.

In 2013 91.6% of the energy cames from CO2 producing sources[1], and nuclear production is decreasing[1], having peaked in 2005.

The exact percentage, whether it's 91.5% or under 60% doesn't even matter though, what matters is that fossil fuel burning is increasing in absolute terms[1].

[1] http://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication...

[Retric]

Energy != electricity.

Easily, 99.9% of all energy used by humans comes from sunlight just looking at farms. Plants store a tiny percentage the ~200+watts per meter of sunlight* average over 24 hours, but if you needed to grow them indoors it would take ridiculous amounts of energy.

* You can approximate that from 4 pi R ^2 as surface area of a sphere / pi * r^2 surface area of a circle. So ~25% of 1050 W/m2 of direct sunlight on the surface. We don't farm above the arctic circle for example so that's just an approximation and most places have winters etc.

So, really it's just a question of how and what we are counting.

PS: ~200w average * 10,000 * 134,000,000 = 2,300,000 terrawatt hours. Oil and coal combined provide less than 40 terrawatt hours per year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption#/medi... You can play with the numbers but we also depend on plankton to feed fish and of course enough sunlight to keep the earth from freezing.

[4ad]

> Energy != electricity.

If we are concerned about reducing CO2 emissions, energy usage is the important metric, not electricity.

However, this distinction doesn't matter much here, because, as I said:

> The exact percentage, whether it's 91.5% or under 60% doesn't even matter though, what matters is that fossil fuel burning is increasing in absolute terms[1].

Also, we burn fossil fuels to heat up houses. If we want to burn less fossil fuels for that, we need to generate more electricity, but we need to do it without fossil fuels. The only available ecological technology that exists today and has enough capacity is nuclear, and nuclear production is decreasing.

We burn a lot of fossil fuels. A big part for electricity, some other part to do other things (X). A big part (not all) of X can be done electrically too, but then we need a way to generate that extra electricity without fossil fuels.

> [something about plants and fish]

True, but I don't understand the relevance.

[Retric]

> the relevance.

Just re-stating the problem. People use fossil fuels to heat homes, but we don't generally consider passive heat gain.

China has a lot of fossil fuel use if you look at fossil fuels, but they are also a world leader in solar hot water heaters. They don't show up on most statistics, but people still enjoy the hot water. Further they cost less than 1/10th of what similar systems cost in the US and could dramatically reduce the need for home heating.