That Resilience article stinks to high heavens. The author got his fee-fees hurt and put up a pile.
I'll take them number by number...
1.
The most critical limit to economic growth is the availability of affordable fossil fuels,
Well, the solution is to quit fossil fuels and move to other energy sources.
2.
“On their own, these measures would not be sufficient to achieve the full range of emissions reductions likely to be needed by 2030 to prevent dangerous climate change.”
The topic was carbon, not all greenhouse gases. But, whatever. Krugman said nothing about rate of changeover. The author commits a foul.
3.
and there just aren’t any alternatives ready to replace oil in all the ways we use it, at the scale required, and in the time available
We seem to have some time available in which we can get off fossil fuels. Some of the problems will be more difficult than others. And some problems may need to be solved by changing the way we do things, rather than using a different energy source. We might need to move manufacturing closer to market rather than shipping over oceans and we might have to sit on the beach in SoCal or Baja rather than Maui.
4.
The rapid build-out of renewables constitutes an enormous infrastructure project that will itself consume significant amounts of fossil-fuel energy. New solar panels won’t immediately pay for themselves in energy terms; indeed, research at Stanford University recently showed that all solar PV technology installed until about 2010 was a net energy sink. It will fully “pay back the electrical energy required for its early growth by about 2020,”
Now there's some grade A horseshit.
We installed very little solar pre-2010. There's not that much sunk energy.
Somewhere around 2011/2012 we reached the point at which on line solar was producing more energy in a year than was used in a year to manufacture solar panels. Cradle to grave. We reached that point earlier with wind.
The energy payback time for a solar panel is now less than 1 year (thin film) or 2 years (silicon). Followed by decades of energy generation. The energy payback time for a wind turbine is 3 to 8
months, depending on the strength of wind resources where it is installed. At least 19 years of generation, possibly a lot more, follow.
5.
The entire economy is energy-dependent. One example: as minerals deplete, we have to use more energy (per unit of output) in mining and refining ever-lower grades of ores
Which means that we move to cheaper non-carbon energy sources and keep production costs down. We already mine with tethered and battery powered large equipment. We already smelt in electric furnaces.
1.
He omits mentioning what rate of greenhouse gas emissions reduction he thinks is necessary.
That was not a topic of the article. He also didn't talk about the problem of ingrown toenails or tomatoes splitting from irregular watering.
2.
He omits mention of constraints to fossil fuel supplies. Oil has become far more expensive in the past decade; production costs are rising at over 10 percent per year.
Why should he have discussed the rising cost of fossil fuels when he's talking about how we can quit them? Does no one edit that site?
3.
He omits mention of energy returned on energy invested, or EROEI.
As he should. EROEI is an important concept when one is talking about a finite and shrinking supply. EROEI has no importance for renewable energy when the inputs are renewable. The cost of energy is important in that it helps determine the final cost of the panel/turbine. But "used up" energy is not important as when one is using oil to extract oil.
BTW, the manufacturing cost of a solar panel, from ore extraction to getting ready to box it up for shipment has dropped below $0.50/watt. Exactly how much energy do you think might be embedded in that 50 cent cost? Remember, you're paying for mining, refining, shipping, and factory cost and a fair amount of labor in addition to energy in that massive half dollar.
I'll leave you with an outtake from Krugman's article on the cost of moving away from fossil fuels. The one in which he did not cover Ebola or why Miley hasn't been twerking as much lately.
The most dangerous proponents of climate despair are on the anti-environmentalist right. But they receive aid and comfort from other groups, including some on the left, who have their own reasons for getting it wrong.