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Brady the switch from fossil fuels to an alternative is inevitable with or without government involvement. You don't drive the bus off the cliff trying to get there. That's a big plum to pick and government intervention may even be a hindrance. Henry Ford has little incentive to produce cars for the masses if could just sell them expensive ones paid for by the government.
except even the fossil fuel industry had government involvement early on to get things rolling. It will get there on it's own, but will there already have been too much damage? I think people really need to consider ALL of the costs when they look at the cost of their energy. That's not currently happening for ANY energy source.
Demography may not be your forte. It is mine. I have demography degrees and everything.
Longer life spans are because of fossil fuels and capitalism. Life expectancy started jumping during the industrial revolution which was not possible without capitalism.
Or energy, and lots of it.
Is it better for a person to live to 80 and die of pollution causing cancer. Or should we go back to the 1600s where the average life expectancy in the Western World was normally about 26 years? And almost always a more painful death than what a cancer victim suffers today.
By any measure we are better off with the use of fossil fuels than without. We are also better off with more people. This can proven by the quality of life in 2014 compared to 1014, 1514, 1814, 1914, 1954, 1984. The more people we have and the more fossil fuels we use the better life gets.
But everyone needs a boogeyman around the corner that is going to destroy the earth. These delusions have been around as long as man has.
You need a course in statistical inference: correlation is not causation.
To suggest fossil fuels have not had a huge benefit on the health of people is quite frankly absurd. Before the industrial revolution life was hard.
i guess the question is what the net effect is. it certainly had a short term huge benefit, with some short term and long term costs. but even knowing that it had a huge benefit doesn't change that if we had the ability to produce all of that power from sources that don't do what fossil fuels do to our environment, we'd be far better off.
i guess the question is what the net effect is. it certainly had a short term huge benefit, with some short term and long term costs. but even knowing that it had a huge benefit doesn't change that if we had the ability to produce all of that power from sources that don't do what fossil fuels do to our environment, we'd be far better off.
Without fossil fuels, the alternatives wouldn't be possible.
100 years from now, all of the technology, all of the "green" alternatives to fossil fuel based energy and life as it will be known as it is now, will have been made possible because of fossil fuels. Hardly short term.
It is easy to discount the contribution of fossil fuels which allowed humans to develop the manufacturing technologies that will be part of nearly every future technology for centuries to come. That doesn't change the fact that without fossil fuels, long term anything simply wouldn't happen.
Without fossil fuels, the alternatives wouldn't be possible.
100 years from now, all of the technology, all of the "green" alternatives to fossil fuel based energy and life as it will be known as it is now, will have been made possible because of fossil fuels. Hardly short term.
It is easy to discount the contribution of fossil fuels which allowed humans to develop the manufacturing technologies that will be part of nearly every future technology for centuries to come. That doesn't change the fact that without fossil fuels, long term anything simply wouldn't happen.
so what's your point? we should stick with fossil fuels out of nostalgia? seriously - who cares?
so what's your point? we should stick with fossil fuels out of nostalgia? seriously - who cares?
I agree with your post, bradykp.
IMHO, Energy is the reason for our advancement. It wouldn't have mattered what that source was. Turns out it was easy and cheap to use and get coal in the beginning. Now we are learning, maybe that isn't the best answer long term and going forward. It won't last forever, even though it will last the remainder of my lifetime. So while I am not personally worried about it for me, I am worried about it for my kids, grand kids, and so on and so forth down the line.
Coal is not cheap if the cost of medical issues cause by coal use is factored into the equation. Regardless of the impact historically, today there are alternatives far superior to continued reliance on coal.
Normally I don't reply to necro-threads, but I'll put my two cents in here:
Obviously we can't stop burning coal in the short term, but long term it's not a good idea because of climate change risk. According to some, there's enough coal on this planet to cook humans to death several times over: http://www.theatlantic.com/technolog...ill-do/275271/
I really don't know if there are any cost effective solutions for replacing coal. Maybe future generations are just screwed, except those who can make it to Russia and Canada.
Last edited by Freak80; 04-29-2016 at 09:48 AM..
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