"newshound" wrote in message
o.uk...
On 23/08/2018 18:00, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
newshound wrote:
Whereas the renewables argument doesn't hold water at all, once you look
at it more closely. Unless, of course, people agree to live with the
loss of standard of living associated with energy prices quadrupling in
real terms over two or three decades.

Since we have little in the way of natural resources left as in coal oil
and gas - once the mainstream of electricity production, I'd not be too
sure prices of those will stay low forever.


Not sure this is true. One of the reasons I went into nuclear power was
that, in the 1960's, the "official" view was that oil would run out in the
1980's.

Being young and foolish, I believed this, but I reasoned that we were not
going to want to give up cars, so would go electric even if we had to drop
range and performance significantly. And electric cars need base load
generation to charge overnight: big win for nuclear.

The official view at the same time was that UK coal reserves were ~ 300
years (this is at the 60's UK consumption of, IIRC, somewhere between 50
and 100 MTon/year).

I see no reason to suppose that the UK and many other countries don't have
large gas reserves provided you frack. The US economy is doing relatively
well on the back of fracking (perhaps the only thing that is keeping Trump
from being booted out).

Not convinced about that. In fact the reason Adolf got elected
was because the **** was hitting the fan and enough decided
that it was worth taking a chance with a loon like that.

Same with Mouseolini.

Oil is cheaper now than it was in the 1950's, in spite of the hike in the
70's following the Six Days war.

Obviously, resource prices *do* rise as they become scarce; but people
also tend to find more reserves, and more efficient means of recovery.