[pzuraq]

That's a ridiculous comparison, The fact of the matter is that those decisions are completely logical. Whether or not global warming is happening, we will run out of fossil fuels and fissionable material eventually. Solar is renewable, self sustaining. By building out solar Germany is reducing there dependence on foreign countries and securing there future; Possibly helping to reduce global warming is just icing on the cake.

[Nicholas_C]

>That's a ridiculous comparison, The fact of the matter is that those decisions are completely logical.

I don't think shutting down an entire industry in a knee jerk reaction is logical. Gently paring down fossil fuel energy consumption is logical. I think the extreme reaction is the illogical mentality that he was talking about.

[pzuraq]

It's more than a knee jerk reaction though, there are a lot of reasons to speed up the switch to solar and renewables. Global warming may have been a catalyst, but it was going to happen eventually and they figured sooner rather than later.

[anigbrowl]

Yes, but if you want to do something about global warming it'd be a lot smarter to keep the nuclear power stations running and take coal plants offline instead. Nuclear power has a spotty safety record overall, and the consequences of a mistake can be acutely disastrous, but coal is likewise a chronic disaster.

[dmd]

> Nuclear power has a spotty safety record overall

This is so incredibly false it's on par with stating "commercial aviation has a spotty safety record overall".

[anigbrowl]

I disagree. There have been lots of low-level safety violations, and it's easy to find examples of chronic mismanagement. By 'spotty' I mean lots of small flaws, a few big ones here and there. Certainly, it has a good low ratio of deaths per megawatt of power generated, but such metrics are not the whole story.

I'm very pro-nuclear, but don't think there's an mileage in blowing off safety concerns.

[pzuraq]

Agreed, I'm all for nuclear power personally and that is a somewhat less logical position, but the irrational fear of nuclear power is more of a worldwide phenomenon than a German one. All I'm saying is I think comparing American fear-culture to Germany's decision to quickly move to solar is at best apples to oranges and at worst completely nonsensical.

[specialist]

First mover advantage. Germany's early embrace is going to look pretty smart, in retrospect.

Ditto Google's early drive for lowering watts per flop in their data centers and seeking lower costs of energy.

GDP (economic growth, however it's measured) has tracked fossil fuel consumption. Some smart people are working to decouple the two.

[sliverstorm]

Solar is renewable, self sustaining

The sun is, but what about the raw materials needed to make the panels?

[dredmorbius]

Solar panels do have some low-reserve raw-materials requirements. CSP (concentrated solar thermal power) rather less so, though it has higher costs and isn't as easily deployed widely (PV can be installed pretty much on any existing structure, CSP generally requires its own dedication installations).

Though really, all this says is that even under a renewables scheme, we're not going to be able to provide power at the level some have come to expect for the population we've now got (7 billion) or are projected to have (10 billion).

The bigger problem from my PoV is that the existing financial and economic systems discount the sustainability capabilities of even a partial capacity provided by renewables to the point that little if any of it gets built -- the biggest hazard I and some others (Gail Tverberg is a pretty notable leading voice, Richard Heinberg another) see is that the financial and economic systems collapse well before energy or other limits fully impose themselves.

And yes, others note that renewables as presently envisioned draw heavily on nonrenewables for fabrication and construction:

https://www.readability.com/articles/oqtyksza

http://www.countercurrents.org/adair301110.htm

The fact that providing energy needs under a renewables basis is going to be really hard doesn't make nonrenewables any better -- they're only going to work until they don't and we fall off a cliff.

What's your suggestion.

[nitrogen]

Though really, all this says is that even under a renewables scheme, we're not going to be able to provide power at the level some have come to expect for the population we've now got (7 billion) or are projected to have (10 billion).

This is best viewed as an engineering problem; those are much easier to solve than social problems.

[dredmorbius]

It's not an engineering problem to the extent that you've got populations whose very existence depends on these energy streams.

At that point, it becomes a rather pressing existential problem.

You cannot simply "engineer" more energy into existence.

Yes, there's quite a bit more energy striking Earth every day from the sun than humans use today. However it's not in forms we can utilize directly, other than simply basking in it. The most widespread process for converting sunlight into useful energy is about 1% efficient, we're already using 14% of all its productivity on the planet, and using it to replace existing fossil fuel uses would require another 21%. That's plants, and for humans to directly utilize 35% of all net primary productivity strikes me as manifestly infeasible.

Source: Jeffrey Dukes, "Burning Buried Sunshine"

http://globalecology.stanford.edu/DGE/Dukes/Dukes_ClimChange...

And the lack of an engineering solution means that this is a social problem -- that's the fundamental conflict here: deciding how to allocate scarce resources.

[nitrogen]

Well, either we find a way to give people what they want, through efficiency or new energy sources, or America keeps bombing the Middle East. And I expect viable fusion to be easier to solve than the politics of a world running out of energy.

[dredmorbius]

Bombing the Middle East is going to be producing markedly diminishing returns by and by. It's not a permanent solution.

[sliverstorm]

The fact that providing energy needs under a renewables basis is going to be really hard doesn't make nonrenewables any better -- they're only going to work until they don't and we fall off a cliff.

What's your suggestion.

My suggestion is to pick our energy sources carefully. Solar panels mean a dependence on China, which is hardly a departure from our current foreign dependence. Maybe there is no energy source that doesn't put us completely at the mercy of another nation, but who knows if that's the case? No one, because renewables are marketed as inherently endless. I'm not a civil engineer, so I don't know all the details and I can't tell you what the best system is. I defer to the actual experts on that. But I can tell you that the endlessness of renewables may be technically true, but often not at all in practice. That's all I'm getting at.

[dredmorbius]

Solar panels mean a dependence on China

If you're referring to rare-earth production, my understanding is that this is more a matter of where mining operations are considered viable and acceptable (largely on a basis of environmental impacts). The elements themselves are relatively abundant in the Earth's crust, they're simply not concentrated as other minerals have traditionally been (though we've done a rather good job of ensuring that concentrated ores no longer exist).

Materials dependence is also different from fuels dependence. In the latter case, short-term interruptions can have massive disruption effects on whole economies. Look at what possible military action in Syria is doing to current oil prices, let alone the disruptions of the 1974 and 1979 oil embargoes. Were material flows interrupted, what would be disrupted would be additional energy systems development, but existing systems would continue to function fine (modulo maintenance and retirement).

the endlessness of renewables may be technically true, but often not at all in practice.

There's a fair bit of truth to that. Many renewables technologies are dependent on specific and limited materials, or on complex technology stacks: PVs also require an extensive chip-fabrication infrastructure. Once it's established and producing it's pretty efficient, but having to build it from scratch would be a challenge.

You're touching on issues that many who are looking at future paths (generally: "collapse", "transition", or some combination / variant of these and other options) with cold, clear vision see.

My point is that whatever challenges renewables offer, they're out only hope, so if it turns out that they do have profound limitations, we'd best start getting used to that idea. If this means going back to animal power and firewood -- well, we have a rough idea of what sort of population can be supported on that technological stack. And I don't paint renewables as necessarily being sufficient for present-day (or even technologically advanced) lifestyles, though I suspect they might be able to offer that.

[sliverstorm]

My point is that whatever challenges renewables offer, they're out only hope

Ok, we're on different pages then. I don't dislike renewables. I think at least one of them is probably the way of the future. I just dislike the black-and-white way renewables vs. nonrenewables are addressed.

[dredmorbius]

I just dislike the black-and-white way renewables vs. nonrenewables are addressed.

Then do some research.

I've, literally, dedicated the past 9 months to figuring out what the hell is going on. And one way or the other, we're going to run out of fossil fuels in any practical economic sense (there will always be some coal, oil, and natural gas underground, but the ability to extract it and gain useful economic productivity from it will eventually expire).

You can quibble over whether we've got enough to last for 5 years, 50, 500, or 5000, but they will run out. Almost certainly at some point in the timespan I've just given. Very likely sooner rather than later for oil (on which we're tremendously dependent for anything involving transportation), and likely not much longer for gas and coal. And those timespans are well within the span of existing human history. Which is to say: we're facing the very probable end of industrial civilization of humans on Earth.

It's also hardly a "green" or "liberal" viewpoint: the finite nature of fossil fuels was realized quite early in the Industrial Revolution. William Stanley Jevons is often mentioned ("The Coal Question", 1865), but he was beat by 76 years by John Williams, "The Limited Quantity of Coal in Britain", 1789. More recently, M. King Hubbert (petroleum engineer), Hyman Rickover (US Navy admiral), and Colin Campbell (petroleum engineer).

It's geology, physics, and math. Not ideology.

And even if we've got reserves to last a million years, the environment can't take it. CO2, mercury, sulfur dioxide, particulates, and other pollutants from coal, oil, and gas will kill us.

We're stuck between those two prongs.

And beyond energy, there's a host of other resources which humans have done an exceptionally good job of drawing down. As if it's our job (and I could make a fair case that it has been).

And, as with any coldly rational bottom-line focused employer, once an employee has provided all the useful work they can provide you, you let them go.

That's us: humanity is very close to having worked its way out of a job. And no, the Universe doesn't offer unemployment insurance, welfare, or a pension.

Think it over. Do some research. See what conclusions you come to.

[VladRussian2]

>The sun is, but what about the raw materials needed to make the panels?

like silicon?

[sliverstorm]

Solar energy technologies, for example, will require half the current world supply of tellurium and 25% of the supply of indium, the report says.

http://www.euractiv.com/sustainability/rare-earth-shortage-h...

[lectrick]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_engine

There's more ways to harness solar energy than photovoltaics.

[api]

Panels are not irreversibly diluted or consumed. They just "fall apart" at the molecular level and have to be recycled.

[dredmorbius]

Recycling has its limits. I've mostly looked at this with regards to lithium (critical in Tesla's EVs, though other rare earths are also limiting, perhaps moreso).

With present known reserves (including recent finds in South America -- Bolivia as I recall), there's not enough lithium to build batteries for an EV for the entire world's population. I believe the number I came up was about 1 in 10. And that's for one generation of vehicles.

Turns out that you can recycle batteries. But the process recovers only 90% of the lithium. After about 7 generations, you've lost over half your original stock.

With sufficient energy, you can extract virtually anything from seawater (even stuff like uranium). But that "with sufficient energy" prerequisite is pretty much specifically the challenge we're looking at.

[api]

"With sufficient energy, you can extract virtually anything from seawater (even stuff like uranium). But that "with sufficient energy" prerequisite is pretty much specifically the challenge we're looking at."

Not so much. There is plenty of energy... I mean tons... with one caveat: it's not always on.

But there's no reason that extraction of minerals from sea water couldn't be a daytime-only thing.