On 24/08/2018 13:20, Tim Streater wrote:
In article , tim...
wrote:

"newshound" wrote in message
o.uk...
On 23/08/2018 18:00, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
Â*Â*Â* 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.

it might not be imminent, but we are bound to run out of oil at some
point

they aren't making any more of it

Well they are, but not in a timely fashion. There's still oil from
shale, too, one of these days.

TimS: agreed

Tim: disagree. In fact I can't think of any natural mineral resouce
which has actually *run out*. As it becomes scarce, the price goes up,
we find alternatives and the demand goes down. You might approach zero
oil assymptotically at t=infinity. This was one of the glaring errors in
the Club of Rome models in "Limits to growth". Plenty of graphs showing
resources collapsing to zero because they left out the feedback factor.

Similarly all the panic about running out of lithium for batteries, and
exotic metals for electronics. Once your mobile phone needs (say) £50
worth of tantalum there will be a healthy argument for recycling.