I don't really understand why it is prohibited for a right center person to believe in governmental influence over the economy and various things? And I guess everyone likes things from the other side as well, like a liberal likes some conservative things and etc.

It is true they deliver the goods, but market is very insensitive towards environmental problems, and I don't really see that much development in non fossil energy sources. There is some, but not that much as it is not very profitable, and oil companies have huge influence. I do feel like they are delaying the development of non-fossil energy sources, and how will the market solve this problem in the forecoming decades?

And what if it will be too late when the market finally decides it is a good thing to leave fossil energy sources behind as they pollute the planet like crazy and will run out in a handful of decades?

I'm center-right because I don't care where the money comes from. Other research, the militiary, or even social programs, I just don't care.

I've not called for intense government intervention. I call for a moratorium on coal fueled plants, over a long period of 50 years.

The rest can be left to the free market. I don't want subsidies or other types of red tape.

I think that what I propose is the smallest amount of government influence that you can imagine, and I think it's needed to steer the current "free market" that's running blindly in a self-destructive manner to a situation that's more friendly for future generations. That's the task of any government, even right governments have to make tough decisions sometimes. They don't have to be just a tool for a completely free market that's running out of control...

I don't think you understand that the free market is bigger than just solar cells. The part that consists of oil, gas and coal exploitation is far bigger and it's growing wildly. It's just completely out of control, to satisfy the world's energy need any available source is being targeted, ANY source no matter how unattractive and pollutive. Low grade coal? Low grade oil? The technology is there, and we don't have to change how we build our cars or how we produce out energy - so it's attractive so let's just use it all !

That's the free market for you.

Peak oil is variable and depends on the price one wants to pay for the oil. Theoretically there's a lot of oil, but most of that oil is just not economically viable: fields are too small, or it's too costly to extract.

Consider the fracking "revolution": it produces oil in an inefficient way, at much higher cost than say 50 years ago when people just had to drill a hole and oil would flow out for free for many decades.

The  high-quality oil wells are often exhausted nowadays and it is very rare to find new fields like those.

What's left for us by our predecessors of the last 100 years, is the less easy oil wells with lower reservers per oil field and lower quality oil.

And in 30 (or maybe a few more) years from now, what's left for our successors is hard-to-access oil with very low quality, like the tar sands and oil shales.

It also takes more energy (oil) to produce the oil, thus creating an ever smaller return.

So... if we throw enough money at it, people can postpone a "peak" for a long time.

The problem with people is, that they're prepared to go a long way to keep things as they are, even if it'll cost a lot (or maybe I should say: even if it kills them). So the danger is, that we could go on for a hundred more years like this and spend a lot of money and resources on extracting ever costlier oil (and with a lot of money I mean trillions of dollars in cumulative investments into a dead-end industry just to postpone the inevitable...).

Just think of the kind of weird things can happen in the future? Things like burning lots of cheap coal to generate the heat/energy to extract oil from tar sands which can then be sold at a premium price on the market. Or maybe they'll build a large hydro-electric plant to supply the energy - instead of using the electricity directly. Or maybe they'll just burn half of the oil they exploit, to exploit more oil. If the next generations are as inventive and determined as us, then anything is possible

Just think about the way the Chinese mine their coal - with lots of small coal mines, and endless rows of trucks transporting the coal to the cities for the coal plants and for heating in houses. It's done on an amazing scale and somehow it works for them.

Or just think about the potential of coal gasification - deep, inaccessible and even low-quality coal seams suddenly become very interesting. You just dig a deep hole, ignite the coal and use the hot gases to power a generator and there you go: electricity at low cost! Or turn it into liquid fuels. The possibilities for this are almost endless.

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/8184

http://www.kbr.com/newsroom/articles/features/unlocking-the-potential-of-low-rank-coal-reserves/

http://coal.decc.gov.uk/en/coal/cms/publications/mining/gasification/gasification.aspx

Note that fantastic story about Norway... 3 trillion tons of coal reserves...

I've tried to explain that in the last page. The 0.04% CO2 shares its energy with the other 99.96% of the atmosphere, allowing a lot of captured heat to be stored and allowing an efficient capture of heat.

You shouldn't get distracted by the low percentage... there are plenty of molecules of CO2 around to create an impenetrable "fog" around the earth. And those molecules are not on their own, they don't have to store all that heat by themselves.

That is why the CO2 in our atmosphere is thousands of times more effective than the CO2 in a low-pressure CO2 dominated atmosphere like on Mars (0.6% of the pressure of Earth's atmosphere).

Is this a serious post?

lol what's the problem with concrete?

nevermind my question was answered already lol, just i dod not refresh the page in time

Again posting at the same time was the issue

I don't think concrete and bricks are that much of an issue..

Yes....we can tell here who's NOT in the building industry...

While you're at it what say we stick with adobe....or just plain straw....afterall....the more straw used in construction the less there will be for cows to eat and thus we'll reduce methane production as well!

I think it's probably time to give up on this thread when you get to absurdities instead of sound reasoned argument.

Think back a few dozen pages to when you said you would bow out of the thread....that was timely....

Ecofriends must love this: North America to Drown in Oil as Mexico Ends Monopoly http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-16/north-america-to-drown-in-oil-as-mexico-ends-monopoly.html

Yes good point, the way bricks are made have to change, too. But that just requires heat, that can also come from electricity.

Otherwise we could as well dump aluminum manufacture too... that also requires a lot of energy... but that's built near hydro-electric plants which supply cheap energy, like in Norway.

Ok.

What's the problem with brick then (for normal houses)?

Or with steel construction (for appartment buildings)?

Is it absolutely necessary to create a house from concrete walls and floors?

If the price is higher for such a house, then the solution is obvious: the price of a plot of land has to go down.

For example in the Netherlands, the price of land has skyrocketed since people could afford it (because of the low interest) and municipalities thought it was a nice source of income. I am pretty sure that a reversal of this development is also possible.

But I get side-tracked, I'll try to think of other solutions.

Note that I do not offer a solution like more funding for public transport... that's so costly, we cannot afford that on a large scale.

We need better solutions.

Well... perhaps the only solution would be to have a power-source that is cheaper than coal, oil, gas.

Too bad that such a source of power does not exist, and it will not exists for a long time.

With technologies like coal gasification, people can probably continue our current way of life for hundreds more years and dump trillions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere.

You are not in the least concerned about that?

Well anyway, I think people are too spoiled by technology. Of course that's ok, but it does make people unrealistic. They expect that the current situation is normal and will last forever, but historically, we live in extraordinary times.

Am I right?

Ok, so basically concrete is a much, MUCH stronger construction material than brick.

I did not know that, I yield.

Basically any solution will involve a drop in wealth.

It seems that most people don't want to give up on ... all the modern goods that we believe are invaluable.

But just 50 years ago, nobody had a mobile phone or a computer and the world was fine without it.

But to be honest I don't want to do without a computer. I think a world with computers is a better world.

But it does mean that we use a lot more energy than 50 years ago, to power those things.

It seems like we are all addicts and we cannot go back.

http://ourfiniteworld.com/2012/03/12/world-energy-consumption-since-1820-in-charts/

Figure 2 is interesting in this regard. 200 years ago, most energy went into heating. Now we use 4x as much energy, and houses have better insulation too... it's all going into luxury like a car, a computer, a big house instead of a small house, etcetera.

But I don't want to go back to the days of 200 years ago, don't get me wrong!