Myths

First there is this read.

The myth of renewable energy | Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

You see, if you want the truth, you have to go first to folks who can actually count past three and don't have a skin in the game.  These are getting more difficult to find by the day.  The Bulletin is still on my "fairly truthful list" with only a reasonable modicum of self-serving and propaganda.

The data supporting the use of renewables was always there for anyone to see.  The big problem has always been that renewables were not efficient, nor sufficiently energy-dense, nor gave sufficient EROEI to make them anything but a  placebo for those in anxious denial of their toy being taken away.

Look, electric cars won't cut it, corn-powered cars won't cut it, algae diesel cars won't cut it.

The only thing that folks don't want to see is that their cars will be going away.  Thirty years from now there will not be a quarter of the cars on the road that we have now.  Just ain't gonna happen anyway else.

This will put us back at the point where we we fifty years ago.  I went out and dug up data from the FedGuv, and in 1950, there was one car for every 3.5 people.  This seems about right to me.  Now there is a car for every 1.24 persons.  Sounds bloody absurd to me.  So, what I figure is that over the next thirty of so years, we will drop to around one car for every four persons.  Lets figure the population will be around 350 million at that time, so we will drop to around 80 million cars.  This way we will lose around 160 million cars off the road.

The cars that remain will be efiicient, except for the ones which tote the rich folk around.  There have never been that many rich folk.  1% is about right, and the fuel use average will probably go up to 70/80 mpg range.   When you factor in the loss in numbers and the gains in efficiency,  we will probably use in the range of 3 million barrels a day for transportation vs the current 14 million barrels a day.

Because in the end, energy will make us throw away our toys.