When is $45 trillion not a big number?

[Larry Gude]

$45 trillion needed to combat warming - Yahoo! News


TOKYO - The world needs to invest $45 trillion in energy in coming decades, build some 1,400 nuclear power plants and vastly expand wind power in order to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, according to an energy study released Friday.

When you put it in context;

[Assuming an average 3.3 percent global economic growth over the 2010-2050 period, governments and the private sector would have to make additional investments of $45 trillion in energy, or 1.1 percent of the world's gross domestic product, the report said.

 

[vegmom]

Well, global warming aside, we need to start developing better alternatives to petroleum now. Fossil fuels won't last forever, and the viable alternatives are going to take years to perfect. And we're going to need use of those FFs until they are widely available.

Even the alternatives we already have at our disposal (nuclear, wind, solar, geothermal, hydroelectric) will take a while to roll out in larger numbers. If every automaker in the US had PHEVs ready to sell this coming model year it would still take 12-20 years for our entire vehicle fleet to turn over.

 

[Larry Gude]

No...

Well, global warming aside, we need to start developing better alternatives to petroleum now.

...we don't. When supply actually dictates that it is economically viable to compliment and then replace oil it will happen of it's own economic rationale. What we're racing to do now is no different than the race to get corn into ethanol and we see how that is turning out. Oil is at least a century away from being economically unviable.

Right now, there is a huge artificial demand for this and the law of unintended consequences is always on the books.

 

[vegmom]

...we don't. When supply actually dictates that it is economically viable to compliment and then replace oil it will happen of it's own economic rationale. What we're racing to do now is no different than the race to get corn into ethanol and we see how that is turning out. Oil is at least a century away from being economically unviable.

Right now, there is a huge artificial demand for this and the law of unintended consequences is always on the books.

But how long is it going to take to have a viable alternative to fossil fuels?

That is why we have to put in the R&D now. And I'd rather it be the US that develops all these wonderful technologies to sell to the rest of the world.

Oil demand is increasing, and many of those controlling the oil wells are quite slippery operators (majority are state-run).

 

[Larry Gude]

Well...

But how long is it going to take to have a viable alternative to fossil fuels?
That is why we have to put in the R&D now. And I'd rather it be the US that develops all these wonderful technologies to sell to the rest of the world.

Oil demand is increasing, and many of those controlling the oil wells are quite slippery operators (majority are state-run).

...if the government does it, decades and untold waste. If business does it, a couple of years, tops.

If gas belongs at $4 a gallon and there is no serious threat of that price falling dramatically, that's 20 million barrels a day times $120 each or so, or $2.4 billion A DAY that alternatives will be competing for.

If oil actually should be at $60 now, 1/2 what it is, then nothing can compete with $2-$2.50 a gallon gas. Oil is just too cheap and too efficient at that price.