Hey generali I don't agree with your signature

cells

Generali wrote: »

I'm not sure because I wasn't there. I'm goig to find out if there's a transcrinlable for the conference.

Why do you place so much value on one saudis views

Our own energy minister is a history graduate who was a banker for a bit and then a journalist who thinks nuclear power stations would be acceptable if only they were a bit more pretty

And the energy minister before that was a PPE graduate who used to work in a pork pie factory

cells

wotsthat wrote: »

Except the national grid?

Yes top marks for you

The grid is a solid state non chemical reaction infrastructure made up or very inert copper and aluminum so its got an extraordinary long life and correspondingly low cost.

cells

vivatifosi wrote: »

You see the world as black and white, I see shades of grey.

The points you have stated do reflect the direction of travel and may well be the likely outcomes, but with the exception of demographic trends are they truly certain?

Going back to fossil fuels, much of the discussion is around disruptive technologies, but what of other issues? 35 years ago we were still in the Cold War. There had been no Gulf War or Arab Spring. Boko Haram had not brought chaos to Nigeria. The Arabian peninsula was more stable than it is now. Nobody had heard of Al Qaeda let alone ISIL/Daesh.

The world needs a constant supply of energy, for that reason it will need to consider alternatives. We've talked about batteries and solar, but also nuclear could play a big part. Similarly on the side of fossil fuels, wider extraction of say shale oil in more politically stable economies will tip the balance back the other way.

Fossil fuels face the green lobby, other technologies and probably most important in terms of potential for disruption, geopolitical uncertainty. For those reasons I don't think anyone can be certain what will happen 35 years from now.

Humans have been fighting and killing each other for as long as there have been humans. Im not sure me not being able to pin point what the name of the group doing the killing and in the media in 35 years time makes it a validation for 'no one can predict the future'

Everything we do is actually in almost every way about predicting the future. All our science and engineering is just that and pretty much most of business too

so once again just saying ni one can predict the future is a emoty pointless worthless statement

Generali

FWIW our Leader of the Opposition, who to be fair is an utter penis, reckons we can have 50% renewable generation of electricity by 2030:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-07-22/labor-puts-forward-50-per-cent-renewable-energy-target-by-2030/6638880

cells

Generali wrote: »

FWIW our Leader of the Opposition, who to be fair is an utter penis, reckons we can have 50% renewable generation of electricity by 2030:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-07-22/labor-puts-forward-50-per-cent-renewable-energy-target-by-2030/6638880

Its possible to go to 50% electricity from wind/solar

Like with most things the Americans are the world leader and they seem to be able to build onshore wind power for v.little subsidy. If they claimed they would go to 40% wind power (and they already have 20% nuke and 10% hydro) I would not doubt them.

However such a move would be primarily at the cost of coal. Hence why I say coal will be in retreat well before oil

also our preoccupation with green has kind of killed what should have been a second age of much better coal power stations. Coal dust fired combined cycle plants could get 60% efficency but they have not been developed (a little testing was done in the USA) but since the west has so few new coal plants to commission its not be refined. Irionically its a tech that could have done so much in reducing coal burn.