Fuel depletion
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Transcript
- Question
- What are things going to realistically look like in 25-30 years when we have depleted fuels?
- Dr Jack Bacon
-
Even if the population if the world grows to be 12.5 billion, approximately twice our current population, and if our energy consumption grows to where we grow at about two and half percent per year growth for all of those people, not just the ones in the industrialised world, but the entire third world. If we all get up to the current energy consumption level and then allow ourselves to grow, even in the next several hundred years you could still collect enough energy to power the entire world just out of the sunlight that hits NZ. So the real problem is not fossil fuels, the real problem is how quickly can we tap into the solar furnace, that nuclear engine that is sending sunlight to us, terra watts every day, every second. If we can tap into that solar power somehow, either with biofuels or with direct solar conversion, we’ll instantly solve all of the pollution problems that we have by burning fossil fuels. Nuclear maybe a short term answer. Fusion is rather an expensive and complicated way to generate a lot of energy in a small location and we may find a lot of use for that to concentrate energy near cities instead of needing acres and acres of solar cell farms, or lots and lots of harvesting of plants for biofuels. It may be fusion that solves that problem. But I think that fossil fuels will go away because they need to go away, their bi-products are just too dangerous for the planet.