Collapse

You are assuming exponential growth forever, where obviously in such a case within ~1500 years we will be using more energy then our sun can provide which is absurd assuming we stay on the earth forever. Plus you are getting to fanciful concepts like type 1 civilizations. Let's get back to earth and say that TODAY at our current energy consumption, we can replace 1 for 1 our current fossil fuel energy budget with something else. But we don't because TODAY oil is abundant and cheap.

If you want to talk about the idiotic Capitalist assumption of infinite growth forever, obviously that is going to stop, it has to. So when it slows (and assuming nothing else changes) millions will die as the quest for profit continues. None of the above is inevitable. I maintain a government that exists for the good of the many people instead of profit for a few at the expense of everything else, can absolutely become sustainable. There isn't even a lot that would have to change for the average person!

As for the doomsaying about 2025 volume decline, I heard literally the same argument with peak oil in the 2000. It's a misleading number that assumes we can't replace oil with literally anything else, even though we and have been able to since the 50's.

That timeline is now effectively unavoidable due to the phase change in the planetary system Earth we've triggered through our initial greenhouse gas injection pulse. The pulse itself is self-limiting, it began mostly by 1950 and will be rather advanced into its tail phase by 2050. Only about a century's worth of a massive anthropogenic release. Whatever happens then is out of our hands. It arguably never was in our hands: human ensemble behavior is effectively deterministic.

Oh for sure. Global warming isn't even being addressed, but I was referring to the article which explicitly isn't talking about global warming, it's talking about energy/minerals/etc

We already know we can have sodium batteries but the economics of TWh and PWh storage plus supporting infrastructure, all created and indefinetely sustained mostly by photovoltaics, including photovoltaics itself, including high temperature industrial processes our industry hinges upon are not supported by favorable numbers.

Comparing a modern steam turbine to a steam engine is a little bit like comparing a jet engine to a box fan.

It's technically correct, the best kind of correct, but they are wildly different machines.

Yep, even nuclear reactors use some form of steam engine to generate electricity out of the heat they produce. It's remarkably effective.

But of note to OP is that steam engines aren't necessarily unsustainable. The heat to produce motion that generates electrical current can be generated by renewable means. Molten salt solar basically does that, for example, and it fits most definitions of "sustainable".

The deer also have radiation suits.