In response to:
"In energy models, the Left believes there must be a fixed and finite pile of electricity/gas/coal/whatever. If you use LESS energy, you can avoid reducing that big mound of electricity quite so quickly, therefore conservation of whatever type and cost is always good."
I was under the impression that some sources of energy are finite, like oil and coal, and I am not sure why it is considered leftist to want to preserve these resources to some degree rather than rapidly depleting them. Conservationism can be considered a form of conservativism, and there was a time when many Republicans were conservationists. It is like being conservative with your personal financial resources.
I'm proposing a bold conservation program to involve every state, county, and city and every average American in our energy battle. This effort will permit you to build conservation into your homes and your lives at a cost you can afford. I ask Congress to give me authority for mandatory conservation and for standby gasoline rationing. To further conserve energy, I'm proposing tonight an extra ten billion dollars over the next decade to strengthen our public transportation systems. And I'm asking you for your good and for your nation's security to take no unnecessary trips, to use carpools or public...
Without that consideration you can pump endless resources into "ethanol" or "solar" or other proven failures and have nothing to show for it as is currently being done.
If you really want to solve a renewable energy problem in the fastest way possible you set domestic fossil fuel development on wide open throttle. Then you put 20-50 billion dollars a year in a crash fusion development program and wait 10 years. That's about the most realistic chance you have.
Unfortunately, that doesn't fit anyone's REAL agenda which also, unfortunately, has very little to do with energy production.
1. the basic terminology means. "overall", for example, is a subjective.
2. the rate of consumption is - possibly knowable within reasonable error margin.
3. the rate of replacement - Unknown. No measurement methodology currently exists.
4. the effectiveness of extraction - Indeterminate. No known limit to physical extraction currently exists. Geopolitical strategy dictates extraction.
5. the curtailment of use by replacement - more efficient (or practical) energy sources, cold fusion, gravity, anti-matter.
6. happens to the level of civilization. Either it develops or descends into a dark age. Geopolitical strategy dictates.
I know of no one who has witnessed the actual process. Very generally speaking it seems to require carbon, geological pressure and planetary core level heat.
And ... you are right again, that there is another fly in the "perfect theory" of biologically sourced oil. Science has also shown that abiogenic sources exist too. Why it is enough to confound the brain of any Algore D grade science student. Particularly those who seem to make up our libtroll constituency. :)
In case you didn't realize it, I was using fact to disprove a fictitious argument. Which I did and you circuitously acknowledged this to be true.
In further fact, your argument of "wait a few million years" is again false and provably so. Oil or coal does not spring into existence every so many million years like a souffle from the oven. It is a continuous geo/biological process.
Care to try for idiotic response #2?
So you are suggesting that we have a wealth of energy, just give it a few million years.