Sobering Energy Facts from MIT

This statement from a MIT lecture (from http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/414/) really caught my attention:

Right now humans globally require 13 trillion watts (or terawatts) of power. By 2050, we’ll need 28 terawatts. Nocera pokes holes in some hypothetical scenarios offered to achieve this objective. If you gave over every square inch of cropland on the face of the earth to biomass production, you’d only get 7 additional terawatts. Plus, “you couldn't eat anymore.” You’d still need to add 8,000 nuclear power plants, by building a new plant every 1.6 days for the next 45 years; put wind turbines everywhere; and dam every available river, to approach the 28 terawatt goal.

Uh-Oh.

If we don’t find a technological solution soon - including better use of scare resources, there will be a natural solution as systems fail: starvation, disease, war and a couple of other horsemen for bad measure. I’m not overstating the matter - as energy fails to support transportation and distribution system, food fails to get to people, they fight over scarce resources (using up the remaining resources in the process), and civilization collapses to 1920’s capabilities.

I’m not a survivalist - I’m just a middle aged guy whose life depends on a steady supply of medicines. I don’t want to believe this either, but its a real possibility. And we can’t burn enough coal (forget clean coal) to generate enough electricity that hybrid cars save us.

This is what happens when dumb shit leaders don’t deal with reality and ignore science. The only small satifaction is they will be as dead as me - either for the same reason or the hopefully inevitable lynching.

Or so I hope.