America’s climate and energy future 15

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1. 

   racc Posted 9:15 am
   03 Dec 2007

   I Like 2050One thing I would change is to focus on mass transit and high-speed rail sooner. These are proven technologies. Relying on technological breakthroughs is rather risky and unpredictable.

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2. 

   Charles Barton Posted 9:48 am
   03 Dec 2007

   How to not prevent global warmingA good approach would be to reject a well established, safe and effective replacement for carbon emitting electrical generating technology.  Insist on using intermittent technology that will never produce electricity more than 50% of the time.  Hope that a new technology will some how bridge the gap and prevent reliance of fossil fuel during the 50%+ time when renewables are not available.  
   Focus on mass transit, rather than electrifying personal transport.  Ignore freight hauling.  Don't sau that local trucking should be electrified and interstate trucking should be eliminated, and that all interurban freight should be transported by electrical rail.  
   Don't mention the problem posed by aircraft transportation, and above all don't mention the other "N" word.  That unsayable word that sets David Roberts off.  
   
   Charles Barton

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3. 

   stevenearlsalmony Posted 10:12 am
   03 Dec 2007

   Building a world for today, come what may....................with the firm intention that our children will have to fend for themselves, come what may.
   If the human community, for whatever reasons, chooses not to respond ably to the requirements of practical reality with regard to climate change, but rather to indulge the insatiable consumption objectives of my "Me Generation" here and now, then concern about the year 2050 will likely be a moot point, will it not?
   Steven Earl Salmony
   
   AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population
   
   http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/

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4. 

   Grist1227 Posted 2:41 pm
   03 Dec 2007

   Utopia with an iron fist?A lot of seeming common sense in this idealized view of a future. Some of the ideas are commendable (like cleaning up coal pollution).
   But, how do we get there without some kind of near totalitarian regulatory system?
   Rationing the square feet allowed for homes and businesses?
   Getting rid of personal transportation?
   Stripping all streams, rivers and coastlines of inhabitants?
   Replacing all overly crowded urban zones and wide spread suburban zones with (centrally planned?) perfect little self-contained Hamlets?
   Guess that means the end of private property?
   And where does a free market fit in this?  Guess that would be out to - along with the creative and personal incentives that only a free market place can bring.
   Just wondering.
   Best,

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5. 

   randino Posted 11:11 pm
   03 Dec 2007

   Holy Shit! Some vision finally.Am I hallucinating?
   Most of my bitchin' and harumping comes from one source. My great frustration with so many people and organizations I know and respect being so damned timid and careful. I guess I am getting old, but I remember a time when bold visions and bold plans were a dime a dozen. It was a time when the operative word was "Yes!"
   Since entering the super max prison of conservative hegemony, the operative word is "No!" The result is timidity, caution and almost a hostility to any proposal that shows some imagination, militancy and guts to it. We have all become well behaved children.
   So, let this sour faced curmudgeon, smile like scrooge with Tiny Tim on his shoulders. Damn, there is some vision out there!
   Rand Cunningham "the harumper"
   
   Randy Cunningham

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6. 

   vogz Posted 12:25 am
   04 Dec 2007

   vaporwareMight want to run the numbers on power generation again.  If renewable energy only generates 20% of our electricity demand in 2020 while coal is banned (and nuclear is deemed a national security threat), that leaves a bit of a void.  
   
   

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7. 

   Delay And Deny Posted 12:47 am
   04 Dec 2007

   Zeger and Evans Are Laughing At You
   
   Your predictions are so...linear.
   How about this:
   Genetic engineering figures out how to engineer leg genes that make the average person able to walk or jog a mile without a second thought.  
   Suddenly "mass transit" becomes feasible as we only have a build stations a few miles apart.
   Then they add a super thin, super insulated layer of skin that makes heating and cooling homes unnecessary.
   Energy needs are cut by 75 percent.
   
   My Log

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8. 

   amazingdrx Posted 1:07 am
   04 Dec 2007

   43 years from nowIf the only thing acomplished were the mass production of the best technology we already have now.  Thereby replacing 90% of GHG producing fossil fuel use.  That gradually increasing ramp up to that point would have halted the human addition to GHG climate change.
   Let's go for it.  
   But of course there is another factor.  Technology will make great leaps and bounds by then.  Making that goal of replacing GHG energy sources even further and faster even easier.
   But even now there is a technology that if it is installed now, need not be dismantled and recycled until maybe 50 years from now.  It will still be a cost effective source of renewable electricity in 50 years.  Huge wind machines on the northern midwestern prairie.
   
   http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

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9. 

   stevenearlsalmony Posted 1:42 am
   04 Dec 2007

   How to get to 2050.........from here and now?Dear Joe Romm,
   Perhaps we could follow what we already know from good science, reasoning and common sense. We can choose to respond ably and differently, in a more reality-oriented way, to the global challenges before humanity, the challenges that we can manage because they have been induced by the spectacular unrestrained overgrowth of human activities now threatening to engulf the surface of Earth.
   Of course, it is fair to ask what the family of humanity could choose to do "ably and differently."  There are several ideas that come to mind.
   
   
   Implement a universal, voluntary program that encourages people to limit the number of offspring to one child per family.
   Establish an upper limit on the growth of the individual human footprint.
   Restrict immediately the reckless dissipation of limited natural resources so that the Earth is given time to replenish them for human benefit.
   Substitute clean, renewable sources of energy, through the use of substantial economic incentives, for the fossil fuels we rely upon now.
   Recognize that everything human beings do on the surface of our planetary home utterly depend on the finite resources of Earth.  One consequence of this realization is understanding that there can be no such thing as an endlessly expanding global economy, given its current scale and growth rate, on a relatively small and noticeably frangible planet the size of Earth.
   
   
   Thanks,
   Steve
   Steven Earl Salmony, Ph.D., M.P.A.
   
   AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population
   
   http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/

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10. 

    vogz Posted 3:00 am
    04 Dec 2007

    Re: How to get to 2050Steven,
    We're already doing #4 through Renewable Portfolio Standards and Production Tax Credits.  The problem is the laws of physics, and specifically of thermodynamics.  This is made implicit in existing state RPS requirements, for which even the most optimistic targets are well short of 50% (Minnesota is currently the leader with an accelerated target of 30% by 2020).  This begs the question: where is the rest of the power going to come from?

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11. 

    John former Marine Posted 4:21 am
    04 Dec 2007

    Churches in 2050?Unless the churches all go away, I doubt any of this will happen.  But if this all does "come to pass" by 2050 and utopia is upon us, what use will we have for religion?  Please, no church in my "compact urban village."

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12. 

    cneal Posted 4:27 am
    04 Dec 2007

    SoCal in 2050The US Chamber of Commerce has a darker vision: by 2050, SoCal will be freezing cold, and its residents will be stranded without oil or any viable alternatives. They'll run along abandoned freeways to get around and keep warm. It's like "The Day After Tomorrow," but without the Army helicopters coming to the rescue at the end. It's a world out of gas.
    Check it out:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XevRKc82soI
    
    vigorousnorth.blogspot.com
    
    
    
    A field guide to the wilderness areas of American inner cities.

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13. 

    richard schumacher Posted 1:11 am
    05 Dec 2007

    Optimistic view of Earth in 2050...assuming that neutron-free fusion power has not been perfected and that artificial intelligence does not have other plans for us:
    All fossil fuels have been outlawed.  Fission reactors fuelled with uranium, plutonium and thorium are the largest single energy sources; the uranium/plutonium fuel cycle is under the strict control of a democratic international regime with military enforcement powers to prevent weaponization (thorium is not under this control because it is impossible to weaponize).  Wind, ground-based Solar, geothermal, ocean thermal, and tidal power are widespread with all the best sites already developed.  Many existing hydro sites have become unuseable because of sedimentation or lack of rain and are being dismantled; water for drinking and irrigation is commonly provided by seawater desalination plants.  The first space-based Solar power stations have entered commercial service; completely clean and essentially unlimited, it is expected that this will provide the great majority of future growth in energy supply.
    All aircraft, ships, cars and trucks are fuelled by artificial liquid hydrocarbons made from atmospheric CO2 and water, and which are thus carbon-neutral.  Road vehicles are all plug-in hybrids; their energy-storage units are strictly limited in size and constantly monitored because it would be easy to use high-energy units as bombs.  Much long-distance transport is by electrified trains.  
    Most of the world now has a high standard of living; consequently the rate of population growth is dropping rapidly and Earth's population will probably never exceed nine billion.  The great majority live in large, dense cities, as these allow the most efficient distribution and use of energy and materials.  But the leveling off of atmospheric CO2 came too late and the Greenland ice sheet is collapsing, creating a quarter-billion refugees from low-lying countries.  There are fierce debates about which parts of which coastal cities can be protected by seawalls and which must be abandoned.  

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14. 

    GRLCowan Posted 3:49 am
    05 Dec 2007

    It won't be like that ...but if I told you what it'll be like, I'd then have to post the string of characters that causes literate observers to think, "Are those characters random?" and then fall over dead.
    There is no genuine concern over weapons proliferation by misuse of today's nuclear power systems; everyone has noticed that in 50-plus years, no such proliferation has occurred. The wicked spend much effort, often successfully, in setting up a strawman -- that such misuse must be impossible -- when all that it has to be, for nuclear power systems' perfect weapons-nonproliferation record to make sense, is more difficult than working from scratch.
    It is certainly possible to weaponize thorium with the aid of a fission power reactor, even a thorium-fuelled one; a soft thermal neutron spectrum prevents the formation of the 232-U that is touted as making 233-U show-stoppingly hard for a clandestine bomb-maker to handle, and thorium doesn't fission much at all in such a spectrum. It may, like weaponizing uranium by that means, be a long way around that no-one has ever taken or would take, but then again it may not.
    Schumacher falls into a trap whose occupants know that it is unethical but lucrative to oppose fission power, but by supporting varieties of reactor that are not now depriving governments of fossil fuel revenue on spurious grounds that if true would disfavour those that are depriving them of that, they can stay friends with the money, and with its friends, but not defile themselves, because they're still supporting fission!
    Hydrocarbons made from air and water would preserve this. What do you so dislike about my B2O3-boron proposal that keeping this is better, Mr. Schumacher?
    --- G.R.L. Cowan, hydrogen-to-boron convert
    
    How shall cars gain nuclear cachet?
    
    http://www.eagle.ca/~gcowan/boron_blast.html

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15. 

    ralfy Posted 10:09 pm
    08 Dec 2007

    What About the Rest of the World?Will the future of other countries be the same as that of the U.S.? If so, won't these other countries end up fighting for the same resources as the U.S.?
    What happens when population growth continues? When consumption levels per capita rises together with that leading to fewer resources for everyone? When more people from developing nations move to (previously?) developed ones? Given the possiblity of increasing population and increasing consumption per person, is it possible that many other things (including materials needed for renewable energy, if not food, water caused by long-term effects of global warming, and medicine and other necessities) will eventually be scarce?
    How will the U.S. offer foreign aid given mounting debts? If the last century involved industrialised nations taking large amounts of resources (e.g., the U.S. has only five percent of the world's population but consumes 25 percent of the world's oil supply) using force and other means, will the new powers of this future do the same?
    If it is shown that much of the damage caused by peak oil and global warming was due partly from overconsumption in industrialised countries, will these countries pay for the damages? If so, how will that affect the optimistic future given in the piece? If not, will new military powers retaliate?
    Given the possibility that renewable sources of energy will not be able to provide enough power for things like standing armies and heavy industry, will those countries that still have access to enough oil try become new military powers and do what previous military powers did to weaker nations during the Cold War?
    Finally, how will the global population growth plateau by 2050? Will it do so because most people on earth will be so comfortable that they won't see the need to have more children, or will it be because human suffering will be so intense that most people will decide not to bring more children into such a world?
    
    

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