> What has happened technologically since then that public planners in
> 2002-2003 would have wanted to know?
The main thing that's happened is that hybrids and nat gas vehicles
have now shown their promise, and that there's much less enthusiasm
about fuel cell vehicles. And for the more than 5 year time frame
that's important. A much bigger deal I think might come at the point
when computers are so good a steering vehicles that there are no
longer vehicle on vehicle collisions. Why? Because then vehicles can
be made much lighter and smaller. 300 mpg isn't actually that hard to
engineer, when vehicles of 200 kg weight are allowable.
Coming back to the point about predicting the future, yes, it is hard
in some regards. Leave aside all the uncertainty regarding technology,
human society is complex, eco-systems are complex. I certainly don't
know whether we are due for a nuclear war by 2015 and whether the
outcome would be the occupation of all Arab land by the US and what
might come of that ...
On the other hand, I think we can chart a possible growth of economic
growth and transition to renewables given present technology and
incremental improvements with fair confidence. That is in the end what
the IPCC scenarios are about. They don't include "nuclear war's
reduced humanity to 500 million by 2100" or "species loss has had a
devastating effect on human health/agriculture and reduced humanity
to ..." but they are very reasonable projections, based on such things
as how long it takes to build electricity infrastructure or get the
70% of China's population who are educated as simple farmers to
upgrade their skills. You don't get from where India is now to 5000 GW
of wind turbines and a few thousand kWh per capita in ten years, but
you might in 50 or a 100.
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
Global Change ("globalchange") newsgroup. Global Change is a public, moderated
venue for discussion of science, technology, economics and policy dimensions of
global environmental change.
Posts will be admitted to the list if and only if any moderator finds the
submission to be constructive and/or interesting, on topic, and not
gratuitously rude.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected]
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/globalchange
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
