Best article for yonks Don :)

SOLUTIONS?

Nuclear?

- Lets quickly eliminate the nuclear option in Australia. Its too expensive for commissioning and decommissioning power reactors

- however unlikely just 1 accident (Fukushima) wrote off the Japanese and German nuclear industries for a decade

- here its election-losing politically unpopular, and

- is no direct help for air, car, truck and interstate train travel.

PURE HYDROGEN FUEL as a REPLACEMENT for HYDROCARBON ENERGY

- For transport a replacedment high energy fuel is reguired. I'd say the need PURE HYDROGEN FUEL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_fuel

"Hydrogen fuel is a zero carbon fuel burned with oxygen. It can be used in fuel cells or internal combustion engines. It has begun to be used in commercial fuel cell vehicles, such as passenger cars, and has been used in fuel cell buses for many years.

...Hydrogen fuel can be used to power stationary power generation plants, or provide an alternative to natural gas for heating applications.

- some costs and drawbacks, for future comment.
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Some much lower level of hydrocarbon use is still required for ammonia, cement and plastics as well as (coking coal for) for steel as noted in Don's article.

Australian politicians can't manage the present, let alone the future.

Evidently Smil doesn't think hydrogen will save us. A feasible rate of decarbonisation is hard to predict because on the one hand fossil fuels are currently affordable and have the supporting infrastructure. On the other hand they will one day run out (think east Australian gas) and rightly or wrongly get the blame for weather woes.

I think fossil fuels are like farmland next to housing subdivisions; numerous justifications can always be made to exploit them. Thus we will either make it to 2050 still using fossil fuels or the global economy will fall apart. My hunch is that things will get dire this decade with only certain technologies allowed which simply don't have the grunt and applications of fossil fuels. I hope public opinion turns on those who won't allow capable replacements like nuclear.

Windmills are too unreliable to do the job of replacing fossil fuels, but even if they wern't, there is no way we can afford them.

One point that is ignored by all greens, & often even those who see the stupidity of renewables, is that windmills have a useful life of a maximum of 20 years. Considering this the suggested number required to replace fossil fuel generation is much greater than realised.

Every windmill existing today, & virtually any built in the next ten years would be dead by 2050.

Any generating useful power in 2050 would have to be built after 2030. The number required to be built annually after 2030 thus becomes much more massive & 5% of that massive fleet would have to be replaced annually, just to tread water with capacity.

This is totally unaffordable on going, but kids & politicians with no math will only see this when the lights go out.

There is no hope of achieving the target dates for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

Not now, not tomorrow, not 2050, not even 2150.

The problem is now so big that it just cannot be fixed.

But politicians and bureaucrats need to set optimistic targets even if they know they cannot achieve them. It's part of the game: Set a target, can't meet it; set another target, can't meet it; I know! let's set another target.

Instead of working out unachievable targets we would be better off teaching ourselves how to die in the Anthropocene, because it looks like being the age of human extinction.

Actually, I think I'll spend my remaining days in Canberra playing Spot The LNP Sex Deviant.

PS. Don

1. I agree "that the whole 2050 target has nothing to do with science and technology and a great deal to do with politics."

I also am unlikey to be kicking in 2050 - if living I'd be 89 years old. But both sides of the family tend to burn themselves out by 86.
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Technological advances would have to forge far ahead of rapidly rising world population. Also each new person (especially in China and India wants a higher energy per person quality of life) - instead of one car per 10 people, 1 car per 2 people.
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So, yes, reliance on new-better technologies R&D:

- HYDROGEN FUEL

- with Hydrogen fuel being manufactured by renewables, eg: Mass collector isolated site SOLAR and WINDPOWER (more propellers on land and in shallow sea areas (already in UK waters). See the Pilbara Hydrogen proposal http://reneweconomy.com.au/huge-50bn-pilbara-green-hydrogen-hub-granted-major-project-status-17416/ but make it for Australian Domestic Use not just envisaged export use.

- Giant and Home Lithium-ion Batteries (and then more advanced chemistry)

to collect off-peak ROOFTOP and MASS SOLAR, WINDPOWER and PUMPED HYDRO.