Ah, but here you're falling into one of the common misconceptions about cosmology. The universe isn't expanding *into* anything -- if it were, the universe would have a centre

First of all, I never suggested that the universe actually *was* expanding into anything... I only offered the notion that even if it *were*, the fact that it has only been doing so for a finite amount of time still makes the universe finite, even if the space it were expanding into were infinite.

Second of all, if it were expanding into an infinite space, there is no reason to conjecture that this space would be limited to three dimensions, so no "center" to our expanding universe can necessarily be found - any more than you could find the center of a soccer ball on the surface of the soccer ball. A center definitely exists, but it's not going to be found on the restricted topology of the soccer ball, and the center of the universe exists, but you can't find it at a point in space... it would therefore be most correct to say that the center of the universe is actually the instant in time of the big bang.

It appears to only be able to tell if something is missing from the toolbox, which is perhaps useful because you can have an external indicator on the box that shows that the toolbox does not contain everything, and may reduce the occurrences of having a toolbox stored away before it has been properly restocked, but it does not do anything to actually locate the tools that were once in the box. Even if the range were limited to a few hundred meters within the box, that would still be extremely useful because you would still generlaly be able to locate it as long as it is still at the same work site.

So it's doing half a job... which however better than no job at all that may be, is still not a full job.

Which is what being fully environmentally conscious always amounts to.

They are right... renewables can't compete with coal economically, and it's foolish to try.

Where they *DO* compete with coal is in longevity.... in partictular, being sustainable for durations that are many orders of magnitude longer than any fossil fuel based system can hope to achieve while still keeping the planet's ecosystem unaltered. Yes, it costs more, but until somebody finds another habitable planet for us to live on and a way for us to actually get there, even a more expensive option is more desirable than no option at all.

And IIIIII will love you again! I will love you! Like I uuuuuuussssed tooooooo!

Again, if a person is willing to pay the costs, they should be allowed to. Secondly, there's a difference between the car having to drive 10 minutes to a parking garage and circling endlessly for hours. Third, when you're talking fully automated roadways, you get greatly increased throughput. Fourth, your "there's only so much road space in downtown areas" claim makes no sense, we're talking about how automated vehicles can free up space downtown by preventing the need for "convenient parking", allowing parking to be clustered into dense and/or less convenient locations, depending on the situation.

Moving parts != motor oil. Electric motors most commonly have a small amount of grease that's designed to never need replacement. There's also some that use hydraulic or air bearings.

Motor oil that's designed to wear out with time is part of the consequences of having to work in the harsh environment of internal combustion engines. It's not a fundamental requirement of moving parts.

People would spend their time engaged in their preferred hobbies. Tinkerers would tinker. Musicians would make music. Writers would write. Programmers would program. Gardeners would garden. And on and on. I see nothing wrong with such a world.

Now, whether people's needs (let alone wants) could be met when you're having such a big global GDP cut, I think THAT's a more serious concern...

"Half a decade"? If you mean "half a century", you're about right.

In reality, nukes are terrible as backup power. Just assuming you have a plant that can ramp up and down quickly (most can't), nuclear plants are almost all capital cost. Hence they need to run at a high capacity factor to pay back the investment; it doesn't pay to idle them. But if you're wanting to use them as gap filling in low wind/solar times, then that's exactly what you're suggesting be done - sit idle until more power is needed. It's a terrible use of a nuclear plant.

Pumped hydro isn't that expensive. It's currently the cheapest option out there by a good margin (except for uprating already-existing conventional hydro). But other techs are trying to beat it. Probably the best thing you can do is simply have a powerful HVDC grid so you can move power between different geographic regions and to use different types of renewables techs. The randomness goes way down when you do this. NG is commonly used as a peaking fuel, and I see no problem continuing to do this (instead of doing energy storage) if you can keep it down to an average of under 10% or so of the total generation mix. It's low carbon to begin with and modern NG peakers can hit upwards of 60% efficiency once warmed up. So 90% renewables, 10% efficiently-used NG, you're talking near total elimination of electricity-related CO2 emissions.

Google "breeder reactor" and "thorium reactor".

Engineering-wise, nuclear waste is basically a solved problem. It's political and economical factors that are making it a problem still.

It's not the engineers' fault; It's rare that I've seen as big of a misrepresentation of an article outside of say Russian state propaganda that I've seen with this Register article. Starting with the title.

The original article absolutely, positively does not say in any way, shape or form, "Renewable energy 'simply WON'T WORK'" or "Whatever the future holds, it is not a renewables-powered civilisation: such a thing is impossible."

The actual article says something very, very different. The engineers went into the project hoping that if we make the incremental improvements to make renewables as cheap as coal, then there will be a mass-switchover to renewables and CO2 levels will be held down. Except that that doesn't work. Why? Because of lead times. People who have existing coal power plants for example aren't just going to take them down because new renewables projects are cheaper than new coal plants. You need to get the price down well below that of coal to where it justifies them throwing their already-invested capital costs out the window. Without doing that, your switchover rate is limited by how fast power plants go offline, which is a very long time. So in their "as cheap as coal" scenario, they only get to a 55% emissions cut by 2050. They were hoping that'd keep the world under 350 ppm. But not only does the world still hit 350 ppm in that scenario, but it continues to rise. Hence, the hypothesis that getting renewables as cheap as coal is sufficient to prevent major climate change is suggested to be wrong.

What that DOESN'T say in any way, shape or form:

1) Renewables "WON'T WORK"
2) Renewables "don't help prevent climate change"
3) There's no scenario in which renewables can prevent climate change

What they call for are several changes.

1) They feel that focusing on preventing emissions with renewables isn't enough, that you need active CO2 scrubbing as well.

2) They call for renewables investment to adopt the "Google Model": 70% core business, 20% related new business, 10% risky disruptive new technology. This is versus conventional investment which is 90% core business (aka incremental improvements), 9,9% related, and 0,1% disruptive. They think this provides better odds for renewables or other technologies to stop climate change because incrementally improving down to the price of coal - while it'd have a big impact on CO2 emissions rates - still won't keep levels down below 350 ppm.

Does this even resemble the Register article? Nope. Not even a little bit.