Great Glasgow "clippie" saying - "come oan, get aff."

Yes the birth rate does decline, but life expectancy increases, creating a much older population, which is usually less productive than the younger generation and usually consumes net more resources per capita. It been forecast by 2050 we will not be able to produce sufficient cereal and grain to feed to livestock to maintain the current levels of meat protein in our diet and will have to seek protein from elsewhere.

With the increases in desertification, land degradation and drought, rises in sea levels around key rice paddy areas of Asian river delta's its hard to see how the planet could even sustain the current population levels long term.
To put some personal prospective on it, I live by the sea a few hundred yards from the shore on reclaimed land from the sea, a few feet above sea level. Despite massive ongoing investment in sea defences the latest forecast for the first time ever shows by 2050 (favourite date) we will be a new Venice of the North............we see the effect of rising sea levels every time there is a really high tide or storm swell/surge, its advancing closer all the time.

regards

(there's some spectacular thread drift below - well done chaps ;-)

Back to the topic in hand...

If you read DriveNation on Instagram, there's a recent interesting post on synthetic fuels. They're quoting strategy & execs from Porsche & Ferrari, inferring that 2030ish production will still include significant internal combustion engine production, powered by synthetic fuel. & that the price is currently forecast to be over $1.20 per litre in 2030, pre tax.

I wonder; if Formula 1 adopts synthetic fuels - which seems to be the plan from c2025 - just how quickly would that speed synthetic fuel development?

Or should we all run our cars on Red Bull?

Will

Certainly the lives of those on diets high in meat protein is going to have to change one that is primarily plant-based. And as you say, rising sea levels are going to be highly problematic, creating many millions of refugees that are going to have to be accommodated on higher ground, leading to further pressure on farmland. But it's important to recognise that the issue is primarily not of resource availability so much as resource distribution, those of us in the 'advanced' societies are consuming a massively disproportionate share of the world's resources.

https://cdn.friendsoftheearth.uk/sites/default/files/downloads/overconsumption.pdf

https://populationmatters.org/the-facts/resources-consumption

Don't disagree, the cultural shock for advanced societies is going to be far greater than people realise.....history is littered with and has many examples of the problems and unrest created by taking 'something' away from someone who has a sense of entitlement and privilege to that resource, made worse if its something as basic as food and energy sources. Mass migration will be on an unprecedented scale, and increasing focus will go on food and energy security. Thank goodness in my hopefully long lifetime I can say I left the planet in a cleaner less polluted state than the one I came into. but zero net carbon highly unlikely.Global warming is seen as a post industrialisation phenomenon, however it goes back a few centuries earlier when higher carbon levels were produced as we intensified farming and opened up eg common land.

Coming back to the topic in hand, it puts our discussions around what fuels/energy will replaced fossil fuels into context.......any low carbon synthetic fuel with still enable us to indulge our passions without having to completely rebuild all of our infrastructure at enormous cost and use of resources for really little benefit, as the conversion process will generate considerable amounts new pollution within the manufacturing process for limited gains in the short term. To illustrate, I seem to remember a case study from my school days now well over 50/60 years old now, that suggested the total energy consumed in the building of a coal power station (transportation, steel and concrete production, building construction etc.) required the first 2O years energy generation of the power station to payback the total energy consumed in its construction...............that's why it is preferable to use current technology made cleaner and more efficient.



regards

Carbon neutral fuel?

So we want to convert carbon dioxide into a combustible fuel. Which, in turn, when burned, will replace that valuable CO2 in the atmosphere. Why valuable? Well we wouldn't have much to eat without CO2 in the atmosphere would we.

Strangely plants have been performing this very function for millions of years so obviously the tree huggers are correct. We need more trees, and other plants, to soak up all that surplus CO2.

Now since things are somewhat fixed in this world there has always been a lot of carbon about but there was once more than really suited humans so mother nature locked it up in fossil fuels which we have been busily turning into CO2 and putting it back into the atmosphere.

So the answer is obvious, is it not, plant a whole lot of oil producing plants to capture all that excess CO2 in the atmosphere and then turn that plant oil into synthetic fuel. We then burn that synthetic fuel in our car engines and put the CO2 back into the atmosphere to help the plants grow.

I think I could do my bit for this virtuous cycle and happily burn some 95 octane synthetic fuel

Finally someone busts the zero emissions bull dermot.
EV create more CO2 than ICE cars

I often wonder if Tesla got it right. Certainly his electric motor is proving to be a masterpiece. Would the wold have been a cleaner place if his electrical distribution had been allowed more development and it worked.