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Yes, eventually the Earth will be swallowed by the sun, nothing lasts forever. The point remains, wind cannot power modern transoceanic shipping and neither can
by manfredo 7y ago
Yes, eventually the Earth will be swallowed by the sun, nothing lasts forever. The point remains, wind cannot power modern transoceanic shipping and neither can trees, deep phrases about the ephemerality of the world notwithstanding.
Hopefully the future regime will be constrained by a means of locomotion that can sustain global commerce such that we don't have to roll back standards of living by the better part of a century. We know this is possible to do with nuclear energy - nuclear maritime propulsion is a mature technology. But the stubborn rejection of nuclear power means that hydrocarbons are here to stay. Fuel synthesis is only feasible with huge amounts of energy. Maybe possible if terrestrial nuclear energy becomes popular, but that too seems like a slim prospect.
- dredmorbius 7y agoTimescales I'm considering are on the order of decades rather than billions or trillions of years. You seem fixated on the status quo. Let go.
- manfredo 7y agoAgain, if "letting go" entails reducing shipping by orders of magnitude, then that is not something society is going to accept. People would go to war before suffering the economic devastation that would bring. If people need to let go of something, let's start with the phobia of nuclear maritime propulsion.
- dredmorbius 7y agoReality does not rely on society's acceptance or nonacceptance.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- manfredo 7y agoSociety is a part of reality. What society will and will not accept is a limiting factor just like the limiting factor of energy density, hydrodynamic drag, etc. The reality is, society will keep burning fossil fuels until a cost effective substitute is provided. I could turn around and say the same thing to you. Go take your proposal they were drastically cut international shipping and move containers with sailboats and biomass fuel to national leaders. You'll rapidly discover that reality disagrees with the feasibility of this solution.
- dredmorbius 7y agoSociety doesn't enable the possible, it responds to the possible. I'm not saying what you're discussing isn't a problem. But it's a separate problem. Again, Stein's Law applies. As Jeffrey Immelt of GE said, "We know the solution. But we don't like it." The problem isn't with the answers or solutions. What you've been arguing here is largely simply wishful thinking. "The consequences of some fact are too terrible to imagine, so we won't imagine them."