Apologies in advance as I’m unable to give a proper distillation here for those of you who want the TL;DL summation, so I’m hoping some of you in this crowd can step in. This is podcast discussion with Nate Hagens on an impending situation coming to us all soon, and this guy is synthesizing a lot of information. It’s decidedly doomsday-ish. His point is that we are coming to the end of the available energy, or at least we have crested the peak of the wave, and that its unlikely we find a replacement, and our extended period of growth is coming to an end. This may be a restatement of the Peak Oil conversation from 20 years ago, which I can’t recall because wasn’t paying attention then. Interesting stuff.
The Great Simplification podcast
- Thread starter PhyloeBedoe
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Apologies in advance as I’m unable to give a proper distillation here for those of you who want the TL;DL summation, so I’m hoping some of you in this crowd can step in. This is podcast discussion with Nate Hagens on an impending situation coming to us all soon, and this guy is synthesizing a lot of information. It’s decidedly doomsday-ish. His point is that we are coming to the end of the available energy, or at least we have crested the peak of the wave, and that its unlikely we find a replacement, and our extended period of growth is coming to an end. This may be a restatement of the Peak Oil conversation from 20 years ago, which I can’t recall because wasn’t paying attention then. Interesting stuff.
Ridiculous. There are centuries worth of untapped oil reserves throughout the world. More than enough time to find a new more sustainable and efficient energy source that hasn’t yet emerged.
Long story short: proven oil reserves would only last 50 years at current rates, and even though there are other reserves yet to be discovered, we are also likely to increase the rate at which we use them, which means we will probably run out* before we transition to an alternative.
There is another view that we already have what we need to make the switch, other than the willpower, and increasing need will create that willpower, so that the transition, while forced, will still happen with relatively minimal disruption.
* Note: in this case, "run out" doesn't mean we actually run out of oil, but rather than the level of our reserves becomes low enough as to make extracting them no longer economically valuable or useful.
Understood that there is another view. Hagens, however, isn’t of the opinion that we have the next energy type ready to go to replace our current energy needs / consumption rate.
His opinion isn’t the only one to consider. His take is that there won’t be a form of energy that’s going to provide the kind of oomph/ROI that oil has. I have read many times that nuclear has the best return on energy return. However, uranium is of limited supply, no?
Overall, I’m just catching up on the subject. Hagen has me pondering things, and he has me thinking we might have a rough road ahead. Like I said, he’s peddling doom and gloom
We already basically have the technology to collect solar energy in space and beam it back to earth in the form of microwaves. That would be a virtually unlimited source of power. If we put that sort of infrastructure in place, then we'd just need to work on improving EVs and especially figuring out how to apply them in situations where they don't really work at the moment.
That is some extraordinary science and innovation on the horizon. (Pun intended). Let’s hope that is the next chapter. Show me where I can invest
