One of concentrated solar thermal -- about 1600 GW peak.

Seems kinda small to me :o
http://greyfalcon.net/energy.png

Considering there's 1000 Gigawatts per Terrawatt

McCain says build nukes.

The DoE, whose head is ultimately George Bush, proposed 20% wind energy.

Solar companies are soaring in the stock market.

Please, Romm, what bogeymen are in your closet??

Texeme.Construct(Participant)

One of the underlying assumptions behind all thoughts about building out alternative energy sources in order to keep our way of life pretty much intact: There will be plenty of spare energy available to build wind turbines and solar cells, etc.

All of these technologies are now dependent on fossil fuels for production. Until, or unless, someone can show how there can actually be enough spare available, high quality energy from the alternative energy sources already in operation this fact is not going to change. But anyone familiar with the problems associated with peak oil is going to realize that the scale of change-over and the time allotted to do so make this a less than feasible solution.

The price of oil just hit $127 a barrel and no one knows when this climb is going to end. One thing most people are sure of is that the supply is not keeping up with the demand growth. The long term outlook is for a global recession along with price inflation in every sector (all economic activity ultimately depends on high-grade energy to do work - period). As primary production (food and extractive industries) are hit with higher energy bills their costs are going to percolate up until eventually every sector is impacted. Producing alternative energy production capital in that kind of economic climate will, I predict, require significant sacrifices from everybody. And that will be just to produce enough energy production to provide a minimal consumptive lifestyle.

We do not live in a one emergency world. We are surrounded by emergencies that are all interconnected by the one factor that still goes without serious attention. People have a propensity to believe they have a god-given right to procreate and consume.

There are times when I suspect we don't give the deniers-delayers enough credit for native intelligence. Perhaps they actually do realize that at the scales we are talking about and with the loss of cheap energy to drive the engine of economic growth (hell even to maintain what we have now) that it is fundamentally impossible to replace the fossil fuel inputs in any reasonable time. I won't grant them conscious awareness of this problem. But I do suspect their denial comes from a more rational calculus than many readers here give credit.

Global warming due to GHG emissions IS important and does need to be addressed. But I strongly suspect it will be by radical reduction of economic activity (forgoing the flat panel TVs, the iPods, and the NASCAR extravaganzas at very least). Thinking that we will simply replace fossil fuels by wonderful technology is, I fear, magical thinking.

I hope I'm wrong.

George  

George Mobus, Associate Professor, Institute of Technology, University of Washington Tacoma, and Professional Student for Life

Joe, if Ahnold comes bursting into any room you are in holding something I suggest you skeedadle via the nearest window. Knowing that the world you see is doomed to extinction makes you a perfect target for "termination."

I live in a very liberal, California college town where it couldn't be easier to reform ones carbon emitting behavior. Such changes are in a distinct minority. Sure the city is putting solar panels up all over the place but that is a drop in the bucket compared to the SUVs, big-box stores and thousands of suburban houses cranking their AC's.

I still think our main job is to wait, debate and educate those willing to listen so that when TSHTF and the general populace wakes up there is a core group of people with concrete solutions handy.

Right now we don't even have a presidential candidate willing to give up on coal. We can't even establish that CCS is cheaper than geothermal and still people want to burn coal.

Cassandra, Sarah Conner, Pandora, whatever your mythical figure is.....not many people listening. Even less changing behavior. Wait, learn, cache your knowledge, the time for real change isn't here yet. Too soon when it gets here; too late to return to what we have now.

Put the Carbon Back

TSHTF indeed: Not being one who looks to TV for entertaining narratives, I had to look up "Sarah Conner."  Of course, the name was misspelled, but that matters not a jot, given how the Celts have traditionally trampled on the Roman alphabet, designed for writing Latin:

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

No doubt that is something of a Californian inside joke, to send Sarah against Ahnold.

But as for us Greekophiles back in mythologyland, Pandora and Cassandra are hardly interchangeable.  The former is a good-looking dunce (you know the kind I mean; sometimes the term "bimbo" is tossed around); and the controversy has continued for centuries, what exactly it means that she has closed her box before Hope could fly out.

The latter, however, Cassandra, is one of the most brilliant figures, male or female, in classical literature.
Her mad speech preceding her death in Aeschylus' "Agamemnon" establishes the foundation of that trilogy, and the Athenian audience's vexed ethical decision.  Her faux-wedding speech in Euripides' "Trojan Women" is an ironically happy pronouncement of victory, and so she leaves the stage a slave and a victim, but also a conqueror and avenger.

George Mobus:
It is always good to hear from George; we would all do well, to hear from him much more often!

I.e., it is pleasant for us cynics to gather, every now and again, for an espresso, plus an Irish-whiskey chaser, before  getting back to work.

"Here is my problem": George's has to do with how to find alternative energy sources; Archimedes' had to do with finding a non-Earth place to place his lever, with which to move the Earth.

Mine is how to get animal rights recognized, a bit, so as to get the biodiversity crisis recognized, a bit, so as to get the global-warming crisis recognized, a bit.

If that seems naive: more perhaps later.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

LGT: "Insisting on unintelligent, destructive lifestyles is criminal thinking!"

I sincerely hope you don't think that is what I advocating.

caniscandida: BLUSH.

Steve: Leadership is in short supply. Partly because those who actually have a clue about where this needs to go would not be accepted in an age of inflated expectations and belief in entitlement to the consumptive lifestyle. It isn't that democracy fails. It is that humans, in general, are just not wise enough to make good judgments. Sapience is in short supply as well. Sadly, I think the answer to Iacocca's question is there are none the people would accept. People want to hear someone promise to preserve the world we have now. They don't want to hear that there is a new world awaiting, but that it means sacrificing now for the future. Leaders rise to the occasion. In this case nothing short of a global clear crisis will offer an opportunity for real leaders to arise.

George

George Mobus, Associate Professor, Institute of Technology, University of Washington Tacoma, and Professional Student for Life

..... (known to all as "the global political economy") and to the Denial of Earth's Limitations, including its frangible ecosystem services.

Virtual mountains of scientific evidence indicate that a contradiction exists between the finite physical reality of the world we inhabit and the cornucopian fantasy widely espoused by so many economists assuring us Earth is a sort of maternal presence, like an ever-expressive teat at which the human species can suckle from now onward.

Perhaps the contradiction between fantasy and reality is better posed in the form of a question about oil deposits.

Is oil a depletable natural resource with limited availability for human consumption in our time or is oil an essentially unlimited product of a planet that indefinitely can produce resources for human benefit without regard to Earth's physical limitations?

Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/index.php