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The problem, as I try to breadcrumb when I find these (most-recently in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29218174 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29218

The problem, as I try to breadcrumb when I find these (most-recently in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29218174 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29218174) isn't necessarily the technology--it's the people. It's a complex adaptive system where different regions/countries have already drawn their own geologic, solar, and atmospheric straws. Just because PV and wind are pushing back fossil fuels at market rates now doesn't mean entrenched fossil-fuel-deposit-rich nations will throw up their hands, turn off the pumps/mines, and go all-renewable. If wholesale fossil remains unit-profitable to extract and burn for some purpose (say, converting into crypto--or just because 40% of the value of your oil reserves minus cost is still greater than what you have in the bank), there will be a reason to burn it. On the other side, too, there will be people whose livelihoods come to depend on a different kind of extraction.

kragen 5y ago
There are surely economic niches where fossil fuels will survive for much longer than the 8–16-year transition period I'm talking about, for example in submarines and circumpolar research stations, but I think the picture for fossil fuels is considerably less rosy than you suggest. Burning fossil fuels requires not only continuing operational expenses to extract them from the ground but also capital expenditures to build machines to burn them with, unless you're just heating your house. And nowadays either the opex or the capex costs more than PV in many places. Yes, undoubtedly ExxonMobil and Mohammed bin Salman will try to arrest this trend, just as Peabody Coal did. They'll fight like the devil. But they can't force their customers to pay them more than those customers would pay to get the same energy, ammonia, or Bitcoins from a renewable-energy-powered source. If it costs less to replace coal with solar power than to dig it out of the ground, it will stay in the ground. And that's why Peabody went bankrupt and ExxonMobil has been losing money since 02019.
- abathur 5y ago
  I don't disagree on the price signals, but this is the logic of corporations with assets, liabilities, cash flows, investors, boards, etc. It isn't necessarily the same as the logic of nation-states sitting on finite resources that may, from some point, only fall in total value. Or the logic of money launderers, who are perfectly willing to make terrible deals in order to convert undesirable resources into desirable ones.
  - kragen 5y ago
    But how could that play out? If you're Mohammed bin Salman and you want to maximize your earnings from the oil left in Ghawar and the smaller fields, stipulating that you believe the international oil market will be vastly smaller in a decade or two, how do you do it?
    - abathur 5y ago
      Anything you can convince yourself isn't losing money. I suppose that math can get very weird if countries factor in expected appreciation of crypto they plan to hold. And even weirder if they end up perceiving a geopolitical stake in maintaining a certain fraction of the global hash rate. When I mention the logic of money-launderers, I mean something more like https://www.elliptic.co/blog/how-iran-uses-bitcoin-mining-to-evade-sanctions https://www.elliptic.co/blog/how-iran-uses-bitcoin-mining-to...

kragen 5y ago

There are surely economic niches where fossil fuels will survive for much longer than the 8–16-year transition period I'm talking about, for example in submarines and circumpolar research stations, but I think the picture for fossil fuels is considerably less rosy than you suggest. Burning fossil fuels requires not only continuing operational expenses to extract them from the ground but also capital expenditures to build machines to burn them with, unless you're just heating your house. And nowadays either the opex or the capex costs more than PV in many places. Yes, undoubtedly ExxonMobil and Mohammed bin Salman will try to arrest this trend, just as Peabody Coal did. They'll fight like the devil. But they can't force their customers to pay them more than those customers would pay to get the same energy, ammonia, or Bitcoins from a renewable-energy-powered source. If it costs less to replace coal with solar power than to dig it out of the ground, it will stay in the ground. And that's why Peabody went bankrupt and ExxonMobil has been losing money since 02019.

abathur 5y ago
I don't disagree on the price signals, but this is the logic of corporations with assets, liabilities, cash flows, investors, boards, etc. It isn't necessarily the same as the logic of nation-states sitting on finite resources that may, from some point, only fall in total value. Or the logic of money launderers, who are perfectly willing to make terrible deals in order to convert undesirable resources into desirable ones.
- kragen 5y ago
  But how could that play out? If you're Mohammed bin Salman and you want to maximize your earnings from the oil left in Ghawar and the smaller fields, stipulating that you believe the international oil market will be vastly smaller in a decade or two, how do you do it?
  - abathur 5y ago
    Anything you can convince yourself isn't losing money. I suppose that math can get very weird if countries factor in expected appreciation of crypto they plan to hold. And even weirder if they end up perceiving a geopolitical stake in maintaining a certain fraction of the global hash rate. When I mention the logic of money-launderers, I mean something more like https://www.elliptic.co/blog/how-iran-uses-bitcoin-mining-to-evade-sanctions https://www.elliptic.co/blog/how-iran-uses-bitcoin-mining-to...