[wazoox]

> Exponential growth in energy consumption was viewed as unsustainable as early as the 1860's but Henry Adams noted that it continued throughout his life up until the time he wrote his biography in 1904 and he saw no end to it.

We're seeing it now, however.

[swombat]

The point of the story above is that people in Henry's time were seeing it too - and yet it didn't happen.

[wazoox]

They were seeing it as not sustainable, while we're actually seeing the first hiccups. As you may now know, finally the EIA admitted in its latest report that peak oil already occurred :

http://www.iea.org/w/bookshop/add.aspx?id=422

quote :"If governments put in place the energy and climate policies to which they have committed themselves, then our analysis suggests that crude oil production has probably already peaked."

Of course this didn't make the news. Keep on the denial, people.

[eru]

Who cares about oil? Oil is important for moving vehicles, but not so much for global energy consumption, like say, electricity.

[wazoox]

Yeah sure. Oil makes up 38% of global energy consumption. Fossil fuels makes about 80% of global energy consumption. Electricity is NOT a primary energy source, and basically you don't know what you're talking about.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2004_Worldwide_Energy_Sour...

[eru]

Sorry, I should have made myself more clear: Oil is the most useful thing for driving vehicles. Apart from that, we have good substitutes for all other energy use cases, like generating electricity.

Coal and nuclear power can last for quite some time. See `Sustainable Energy without the hot air' for some numbers. (It's available online.)

We don't have the necessary capacity of say nuclear reactors ready at the moment. But that's an inconvenience of a few years at most. (Thanks for the link!)

There may be peak oil, but no reason for peak energy.

[wazoox]

At the current building rate, we'll have soon less nuclear reactors. Even with a huge building effort it very much looks like nuclear will remain more or less as is.

Then there isn't that much U 235. We'll need thorium or fusion...

The coal outlook is very unclear. Some reliable sources says it will peak in 2025, 2050, 2100 or 2150. Then we'll have much EROI because of the necessity to capture CO2.

From what I know, we'll use much less energy quite soon individually, and not much more than we do nowadays globally.

[rbanffy]

Careful with your assumptions. Energy is nor equal to oil.

[wazoox]

Of course it isn't; however it represents the better part of our energy consumption, and we face an unknown : moving from one main source of energy to an inferior one (in the past, we always went from one source to a better one).