A very scary prediction!!!

[abzug]

The solution has been with us for many decades--it's called nuclear energy.

[Shoog]

Ha, Ha.

Shoog

[abzug]

Thanks for your thoughtful input.

[Netlist]

The solution is the will to keep an open mind to develop new technologies that are both environmental friendly (read: no more relying on natures finite resources) and at the same time economically attractive.
Cradle to Cradle is a good example.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cradle_...We_Make_Things
If we had used the same arguments when the incandescent light bulb was developed, we still would light our homes with candles.
I see a bright future for all great minds who think outside the box and will put new know-how into practice.

/Hugo

[abzug]

No solution that increases efficiency or is "ecologically friendly" should be made as a compromise at the expense of anything else, such as performance or price.

[Netlist]

Exactly. Looking at the progress we’ve made over the past century, it looks like we are on the right track for many applications. Think of how efficient a car can be made, look at the progress in house building. Today, we are able to construct them in such a way that no or very few external energy is needed to keep us warm in the winter and fresh in the summertime.
Look how efficient we learned to communicate via email, cell phone. Think of classD amplifiers and OLed TV’s that currently find their way into our homes. All perfect examples of increased efficiency combined with better performance and price.

/Hugo

[Nordic]

"Not to sound alarming or anything, but apparently, we've only got a decade or so before our planet runs clean out of indium...

...For those in the dark, indium is a critical resource in "creating solar cells, LCD and other devices which must have transparent electrodes to carry out their function," but the aforementioned crew has seemingly been able to take graphene ("single layer 2D sheets extracted from the common material graphite") and build an acceptable alternative. The creation is 80-percent transparent to visible light and 100-percent transparent to infrared light, which could actually lead to solar cells capable of soaking up even more energy from more of the EM spectrum. 'Course, there's no telling how close this discovery is to being commercially viable...

There has also been develpoment in LEDs they found they could increase the brightness by haveing less material between the diode and the eye.... a la nanoscale holes drilled in the houseing... yet again, a few years away from commercial release...

from Engated a week or so back

End poverty, eat the poor

The more I think about it, China's population controls seem more and more humane to me when I concider the alternative...

[Conrad Hoffman]

I'm not worried. I've never seen a situation fail to resolve itself one way or another. Oil will run out, and before it does, it will become too expensive and valuable as a feedstock for plastics and such, to even consider burning it. Ethanol appears to be an incredibly stupid "solution", because it takes more energy to produce it, than it provides. Solar is still in need of a breakthrough. Everybody around here is up in arms because they don't want to spoil the scenery with giant wind turbines. I didn't have major objections to them until I was driving by one and discovered the motion made me physically ill. Reliability is still a huge issue, and without government support I suspect no one would ever build one, as the economics are a bit shaky. But it doesn't matter. A technology, be it one of those, or nuclear, or something we've yet to consider, will rise to the top of the heap, and civilization will continue. Trying to predict exactly how it will happen is probably impossible.

BTW, be sure to read about the hazards of CFLs on the 'net. They use very cheap circuitry, and don't always fail gracefully. I.e., they can burn your house down. Don't put 'em in unventilated fixtures, which would be most of the ceiling fixtures in my house! Don't put them in places where they'll run unattended with nobody home.

[SY]

Paul Ehrlich. Julian Simon.

[AdamThorne]

I have to wonder how CD's dying (even if it were to happen) would save the world? Do these tiny slips of plastic and aluminum really represent that much of a threat? It's not like anyone buys them only to toss by the dozen into landfills. Not like milk cartons or packaging or planned-obsolete consumer electronics, or corporate chochkey, or any of a million other things.