Hi Paul,

I just pointed out that wind and solar provide less than ten percent of China's power with a capacity factor of about sixteen percent. I think that China is also building more coal and nuclear generation than wind and solar. I would guess that wind and solar work with hydro.

Hi Fester,

What you think is not borne out by the reality;

"No, China is not building more coal and nuclear capacity combined than wind and solar. While China leads the world in new coal construction—responsible for 95% of global new projects in 2023—it is installing far more capacity in wind and solar, which often outpaces coal additions by 3-4 times in recent years. While 25 GW of new coal was approved in early 2025, this is lower than the massive surge in new renewable capacity in the same period."

Regardless of what anyone thinks, its inevitable that fossil fuels have a finite life, millions of years in the making, yet it has taken less than 200 years to consume half of known reserves. Now, oil and gas have another 50 years of supply, and coal about 100 years, but with the exponential growth in energy demand, and depending on alternatives, that time frame could be a lot less, and the economic impact could be be far greater than anticipated.

A question; How do you see the energy future for the world?

Hi Paul,

"What you think is not borne out by the reality;"

Hossenfelder is no dummy. I checked with the IEA data for China. Still less than 10% from wind and solar for total energy. That is not bad, as on a world scale wind and solar amount to a couple of percent.

How long do you think it would take to power the world with wind and solar, especially when it only lasts a couple of decades and world energy consumption has been doubling every 50-70 years?

Hi Fester,

We can go around in circles for infinitum, one saying this, the other saying that. I did put a question to you; How do you see the energy future for the world?

Its disingenuous to answer a question by posing another question.

To answer your question, in my view no one can tell the future, but the hope is, and its a reasonable hope, that there will be technological improvements, coupled with energy efficiency use improvements, that the world will be able to support humanity.

The other question is the impact fossil fuels are having on the environment. For me that is a no-brainer, its real, its undeniable. No argument