ReeferMadness

It is perhaps net positive compared to burning wood and coal (you still haven't demonstrated even that much). It is certainly net negative compared to contemporary renewable energy. Perhaps you could read the replies to the critique, not just the stuff you agree with. The author states that the analysis shows that they could build a system without using backups. And if they did need backups, there are plenty of alternatives to fossil fuel generation. Pumped water, compressed air, molten salt, hydrogen storage, these are just examples of backup systems in place today. Ooh, nice ad hominem. I guess that means you've run out of specious logic.

Your logic is specious and you're just plain wrong.First, if you could show that the improvements in life spans are somehow due to the use of fossil fuels (which, by the way you haven't even attempted), that would would only show a benefit relative to the use of wood and coal, not relative to the use of modern renewable energy. You're comparing apples to woodchucks. Second, increased life span does not automatically infer improved health. Due to medical advances people can live for decades in an unhealthy state. We know that solar and wind power avoid emissions that harm human health. It is perfectly valid to assess that harm to human health as a cost of using fossil fuels. Even your "engineers and bean-counters" could see that!! Sez you. You take the critique at face value and discount the SA article itself. Your own Wikipedia source states that wind energy is cheaper than coal, even allowing for availability.

Only based on your highly selective reading. The report doesn't say the worst case is anything. It says that the overall costs can't be quantified. And the costs that can't be quantified (health, future climate change) are likely to be the largest costs. I suppose you'd prefer to just keep your head in the sand and pretend they don't exist. You didn't look at that wikipedia article very closely, did you? Because if you had, you would notice that the tables say that the cost of renewable energy is already in the cost-competitive range compared to electricity generated by fossil fuels. For example, the Department of Energy estimates for a plant opening in 2017 are that generating electricity from coal would cost between $99.60 and $144.70 per MWh. Generating the same power by wind (compensating for lower availability) would cost just $96.80 per MWh. Generating by photovoltaic solar power would be $156.80 per MWh. YOUR source. Not at all. It's just that you apparently see only what you want to see. Oh, I see. Then I guess you wouldn't mind if we dug up your lawn and buried toxic waste there? After all, there are only damages if you can prove loss right??

They cite several timeframes. I agree that the most aggressive one is unlikely but that doesn't mean we should all just shrug our shoulders and continue to pollute the planet the same as we've always done. That would be defeatist and not very intelligent. Political will doesn't just happen - it has to be created. Political will is the sum of awareness and knowledge of citizens. If we all do our part, it can easily happen. But people have to care first.

The only reason that fossil fuels are as inexpensive as they are (and the costs are climbing fast and will continue to do so) is that they've succeeded in externalizing the lion's share of the costs. The associated health care costs will continue for decades after we stop using fossil fuels. The cost to the environment will continue for centuries. It's ironic that fossil fuels were created in the age of dinosaurs - because it's today's dinosaurs that can't stop using them.

That might be true if you consider only direct subsidies. In fact, the true cost of subsidizing the cost of fossil fuels can't even be accurately calculated. The National Academy of Sciences, in a 400-odd page publication had this to say: Twenty years after the Exxon Valdez ran aground (while the good captain slept off a Vodka binge), the beaches of Prince William Sound remain soaked in oil. You want to claim we're not subsidizing the fossil fuel industry? Fine. Here's how to achieve that. Pass laws that say the cost of removing pollutants from the atmosphere must be baked into the cost of fuel. All of it. CO2, SO2. Everything. And let's talk about fracking. Don't tell me chemicals that they're injecting won't hurt us. Clean it up. All of it. And when there's a spill? Clean it up. And don't stop until you're done. Make the beaches the way you found them. Don't tell us it's good enough and nature will clean it up in a few years. That's nonsense. When that coal mine is exhausted, I want the company to make the area pristine like it was. No tailings ponds. No moonscape. No contaminated land or groundwater. Once you're done costing that, come back and tell me renewables are too expensive.

Here we go. I wonder what is the record amount of posts for an internet discussion before someone comes up with statements containing thinly veiled racist sentiments. The reality is that you have things exactly backwards. The reality is that these people have large families because they are poor - not the other way around. The reality is that people living in poor, largely agrarian societies have large families because children are economic assets and the parents rely on the children to get them through old age. (The one notable exception that comes to mind is China, which implemented a brutal one child policy implemented by forced abortions and sometimes infanticide. Is that a model you care to endorse?) The reality is that this has been the case in western societies until they went through economic development. The reality is that the western economic development came about in no small part on the backs of the colonies that now make up the impoverished nations that you now denigrate. The reality is that the inhabitants of these poor nations will have smaller families once they rise out their state of economic desperation. We could assist in many ways but we won't until we give up on the notion of economic Darwinism. At the very least, we could insist that the multi-national headquartered in the west that help to keep these people impoverished change their ways.

Yes, we all know how wacky those scientists can be - just look at a picture of Einstein. I'm sure if you just told them they should ask engineers before they go off and publish their findings, everything would be much better. The funny thing is, though, that the number and size of WWS implementations continue to grow. Do you think that they are all put up by scientists or are there maybe a few engineers already involved?? If subsidization of fossil fuels were to end and the cost of fossil fuels included all of the indirect costs (environmental damage, health costs, climate change), we would see a very different picture.

There seem to be some of you who think that you can dismiss an article written by a pair of scientists just by sneering at it or comparing it to a Monty Python video. I'm sure that sort of debate plays well on the rigs or down in the coal mine. However, some of us would like you to point out some problems with it. Certainly, it is high level but that in itself doesn't make the plan unfeasible. If you'd like to point out some actual problems with the proposal, we can talk.

A thirst for cash seems pretty similar to greed to me. As for the video, Monty Python is always good satire. What it has to do with the SA article is beyond me.

If you have any actual issues with the SA issue, why don't you point them out? Otherwise, your post is nothing but a cheap drive-by smear. Get back to me when you have something to say. In addition to the SA article, I've read multiple articles and reports that say some forms of alternative energy (solar and wind) are becoming cost-competitive with fossil fuel. I know that scares those of you fossils who are economically tied to the fossil fuel industry but suck it up.

I see. cash, not greed. Thanks for illustrating the difference. Political will is always a problem whenever things need to change. That's why we need leaders who are not beholden to economic interests. However, we shouldn't let lack of political will get in the way when things need to change.

Specious reasoning. Certainly, the use of fossil fuels has brought many benefits in the same way that replacing burning wood for heat with burning coal for heat brought benefits. However, it has also brought health concerns and risks. In the same way that we have evolved past coal fireplaces in peoples homes, it's now time to evolve past the usage of fossil fuels. There seems to be some assumption that everyone who is in favour of evolving past fossil fuels wants to return to the stone age. We just need to be smarter and less greedy with energy and resource usage.

How can anyone argue with that logic?

I believe that your real question is if less people are required to produce the required goods and services, how do you distribute money? I can imagine a number of possibilities for low work (everyone works but much fewer hours), work-optional or no-work worlds. The only they thing they have in common is dog-eat-dog laissez faire capitalism has to go. It's propaganda that technological progress is fostered by capitalism. Many (I would say most) of the great scientific discoveries have been made by scientists who were motivated by a thirst for knowledge, not greed. Following is the last paragraph. What's not to like?

Your negative attitude isn't shared by the scientists who wrote this Scientific American article. Propaganda. What an unimaginative question. I don't need to have somewhere to go every day at 8:00. I can easily fill my time.

So, those are my only choices? horse and dung carts or hydrocarbon economy?

I agree that 7 billion is a lot and that having that many people will produce a sizable impact on the planet no matter what. However, we could have much less impact than we currently do. I think it is feasible to keep them warm, clothed and fed in a sustainable fashion. We won't really know unless we seriously try. Gainful employment is a different matter. Capitalism is grossly inefficient in all ways but most notably in the way that it uses (and wastes) human effort. An efficiently run economic system could greatly lessen the amount of paid employment necessary to produce goods and services. Different topic. Hydrocarbons are their own issue. We are dependent on them in the short term but are doing pathetically little to reduce our dependence. In fact, we reinforce our dependence by subsidizing fossil fuel producers. Also, hydrocarbons are used for a lot more than energy. Lack of imagination and vision are leaving us in a situation where we are putting our quality of life at risk because we aren't putting enough energy into looking for alternatives.

Brilliant straw man argument. Are you so brain-washed as to believe there are only 2 choices? You may live in a world where safe drinking water and clean air are a "rich man's luxury". Please stay there and stop screwing up the planet where my children have to live.

Another brain-dead comment. Production from fracking is short term. Oil companies are starting to find that the recoveries don't even last long enough to cover the cost of drilling. And it hasn't been around long enough to understand environmental effects on things like ground water. Fracking has to be the stupidest thing people have ever done.

Which is fine for Old MacDonald. Less fine for future generations who might not have enough to eat. Your answer and that of TimG nicely illustrate the myopic greed that characterize conventional economic thinking. Focus on money - don't worry about the future. It's like chopping up your house for firewood in the summer because you can live in a tent while it's warm.

Yes, we will. And if we keep on pursuing policies that force the OM's of the world to focus on short term profits instead of caring about the world their kids will inherit, a lot of people will be dead of starvation and disease and war, not of old age. and there will be a lot fewer of us around. Which is why I don't blame the OM. Rather, I hold right wing governments and the people who vote them into power accountable. They would rather have bread that is a few cents cheaper than keep the land in good condition for future generations. The money that OM uses to pay his mortgage is an abstraction. It's something that humans invented to exchange wealth. The rules that humans have put in place mean that OM is put in a position where he has to choose between what is good for the land and staying in business. The land that OM is ruining is not an abstraction - it's real. It can't be invented or created out of thin air. If it is damaged, it can be damaged for decades, even centuries. We have economic polices that favour abstraction over reality. That is not rational.

And in order to make his mortgage payments, OM uses farming methods that will boost yields in the short term but ultimately undermine the productive value of his land.

It would be great if we could have a senate that is elected but I don't think we need any more emphasis on the provinces. This country is barely hanging together as it is. The HoC has become regionalized, first by the BQ and later by the Reform/Conservative Parties. On top of that, we have wannabe dictators like Harper madly centralizing power in the PMO. Bad, bad. What would be really cool is we could have a house where constituencies could be built in a way that is not primarily geographic. The practice of building constituencies based solely on geography is so 1880s. Any meaningful senate reform is going to require a constitutional amendment. Any meaningful change will be DOA because the provinces who benefit from the current lop-sided senate will block it. Gridlock.

It was the lack of transparency in the system that allowed the sub-prime mortgages to be issued. As long as the game was being played, nobody with any actual knowledge held the bad debt. The lenders made their cut by making loans they knew they wouldn't have to collect on. They packaged those loans and passed them onto the investment banks. The investment banks packaged them into deals that were so complex that they themselves didn't understand them anymore. That didn't stop the rating agencies from stamping them triple-A. And the institutional investors bought them. It was a ponzi-scheme writ large. The problem with American Crony Capitalism is that it is so incestuous. The people in charge of the Federal Reserve come from Wall Street. Even now, the people that are in charge of running the system are the same investment bankers who caused the mess in the first place.