I like natural gas, and used to be an employee of an excellent gas company (and wish I had purchased a significant amount of stock when I was there in the late 90s...grrr!). It burns very clean and can be extremely efficient in a gas turbine (approaching/exceeding 90% yield).
We have a good 300 years worth of proven, harvestable resources at current usage and using current techniques. If other areas open up (including offshore) and technology improves, this cutoff date will certainly extend. However it is not an inexhaustible resource. It is a highly efficient and clean source of heating (as well as being very important in the plastics, chemical, and fertilizer industries as well), and in some ways should be kept for these uses.
Alternative sources are mandatory to move into the future. Oil is the only (currently practicable) energy source for air travel, period. Oil is exceptionally important, and practically irreplaceable, as a feedstock for plastics. No oil, no plastics, and by definition no composites will be possible (epoxy is a 'plastic' and typically makes up over half the mass of a composite structure).
Windmills will not be able to run indefinitely. The composite structures will degrade through exposure to UV and the elements, and through normal usage. Should they (the blades anyhow) last a decade or so each, how economicaly feasible are they without government support? They are good for augmenting peak demand only, and should never be considered for base load. It is somewhat ironic that the smaller, faster spinning windmils are undesirable because they kill the raptors and migrating birds, while the bigger slower turning windmills are undesirable because their enormous pressure deltas across the blade disc kills the bats. Can't win either way, and the environment can tolerate neither the loss of raptors nor of bats. Luckily bats breed like rodents...
We have a good 300 years worth of proven, harvestable resources at current usage and using current techniques. If other areas open up (including offshore) and technology improves, this cutoff date will certainly extend. However it is not an inexhaustible resource. It is a highly efficient and clean source of heating (as well as being very important in the plastics, chemical, and fertilizer industries as well), and in some ways should be kept for these uses.
Alternative sources are mandatory to move into the future. Oil is the only (currently practicable) energy source for air travel, period. Oil is exceptionally important, and practically irreplaceable, as a feedstock for plastics. No oil, no plastics, and by definition no composites will be possible (epoxy is a 'plastic' and typically makes up over half the mass of a composite structure).
Windmills will not be able to run indefinitely. The composite structures will degrade through exposure to UV and the elements, and through normal usage. Should they (the blades anyhow) last a decade or so each, how economicaly feasible are they without government support? They are good for augmenting peak demand only, and should never be considered for base load. It is somewhat ironic that the smaller, faster spinning windmils are undesirable because they kill the raptors and migrating birds, while the bigger slower turning windmills are undesirable because their enormous pressure deltas across the blade disc kills the bats. Can't win either way, and the environment can tolerate neither the loss of raptors nor of bats. Luckily bats breed like rodents...
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