OK, time to wrap up my whirlwind tour of energy and environmental predictions, projections, and blatant guesses. I posted Part 1 three days ago, and you can see my caveats about this exercise there.

Global warming
Like my prediction for peak oil, I think it’s clear that the info-war between the believers and the deniers will only get worse. In particular, the deniers will continue their well established pattern of latching on to every minor detail, whether it has any significance or not, and claiming that it somehow proves that “global warming is a hoax” or that it’s some sort of plot to make scientists or policymakers rich or powerful. (I’m still trying to figure out how I cash in on all that supposed money sloshing about.) They will also continue to indulge in the flip side of that pattern, and claim that every collapsing ice shelf or heat wave that kills thousands is merely part of a pattern that has been going on for millions of years. The fact that they treat events that support their denialist views differently from those that are inconvenient (to borrow a term) will never seem to occur to them.

The facts on the ground (and in the air and under the sea) will continue to show warming. Because we live on a big planet with lots of flows of air and water moving heat around, there will be temporally local dips and surges, but unless the basic laws of thermodynamics are repealed the planet will continue to absorb more heat than it reflects back into space, which means it will continue to heat up. These local fluctuations are directly analogous to peak oil and someone finding a big oil field with a few billion barrels of crude–it makes headlines, and causes a lot of running in circles and shouting, but it doesn’t change the fundamentals of the situation.

I don’t even know how to feel about the prospect for continued melting in the Arctic and Antarctic. I would like to think that dramatic, record-setting events at the poles might be enough to move us to action, but I now think that’s being naive. There will be such a chorus of people screaming about how cycles in the melting are normal, and how an ice-free Arctic will be a boon to shipping and oil exploration, that it will only feed the war of words and lead to further policy paralysis.

On the policy front, we will see a lot of false starts on cap-and-trade programs. It will take a lot of arm twisting and some truly ugly compromises to get from where we are now to a reasonably comprehensive and “fair” (whatever that means) CO2 cap.

Water
Water is at the intersection of global warming and peak oil issues. In brief, peak oil means higher prices for gasoline, which pushes people to electrify transportation, which means greater reliance on thermoelectric generation (coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear), which in turn means more water draw for electricity generation.

At the same time, global warming means less summer melt from smaller snowpacks, which reduces hydroelectric generation. Global warming also will cause droughts in some areas, leading to reduced electrical output from generating plants.

In short, just when peak oil is leading us to rely ever more on generating electricity, global warming will make it more difficult and expensive to keep the electrons flowing.

We will increasingly have to add water consumption and availability as a major planning point in electricity generation, along with the availability and cost of fuel and the emission of CO2.

Wind, solar, wave, tidal, underwater turbines, geothermal
All of these will see a lot of R&D, and even more policy support, albeit unevenly as various politicians enter and leave office and things like the PTC (production tax credit) expire (or nearly expire) and are renewed. In this area, the US will continue to look like hapless idiots in comparison to the EU.

Nuclear
There will be more nuclear power plants built in the US and around the world, even though no one will find a truly good answer to the issue of how to deal with existing and newly created nuclear waste.

US government subsidies will provide a major push for nuclear power’s “renaissance”, although the portion of electricity it supplies (currently about 20%), will rise only slightly over the next couple of decades.

Thousands of years from now, archaeologists will find Yucca Mountain and wonder why we dug this immense, elaborate facility in a desert mountain and never used it for anything. After much theorizing they will conclude it was some sort of cult project that was abandoned because we couldn’t figure out how to make toilets work.

Cars
The US car companies are just beginning their struggles. They’re far too heavily dependent on trucks, and even when they try to embrace hybrid technology they often get it wrong, as in GM’s big advertising push on full-size SUV hybrids. (Most people crushed by gasoline prices won’t trade in a big SUV for another big SUV, hybrid or not. They’ll instead go for a Camry-size car that costs much less than a full-size SUV and gets better mileage than even the hybrid variants.)

The acceptance of diesels in the US will be slowed by the high price of diesel fuel over gasoline (or at least the fear that such a price disparity will resurface). As I write this, the US average for gasoline is $3.36/gallon, while diesel is 20% higher, at $4.06/gallon. That 20% premium is close enough to the usual miles-per-gallon advantage of diesel over gasoline that most people will stick with gasoline and avoid the hassles of finding diesel fuel, which can still be an annoyance in some places in the US.

Hybrids will gain even more traction through a trio of effects: Green image, lower hybrid price premium (a major focus for Toyota and Honda, in particular), and ever-rising gasoline prices.

It will become apparent just how ridiculous the new 35MPG/2020 CAFE regulation is–the price of gasoline will provide far more incentive than that law ever will. But you can expect the Big Three to complain endlessly about the horrors of a 35MPG fleet average.

The big event on the car front will be the arrival of plug-in hybrids and full electric vehicles. GM’s Volt, Nissan’s Denki Cube, Subaru’s R1e, and Mitsubishi’s iMiEV could all be in US car dealerships in late 2010 or early 2011. US consumers will absolutely love them, if the people I’ve presented to are any measure, and this will set off a scramble among other car companies to accelerate their in-place development work for similar vehicles.

The biggest unknown in electrifying transportation will be how much better and cheaper batteries (by which I mean both batteries in the traditional sense plus ultracapacitors) will be at production volumes in a few years. A lot of very smart people are doing a lot of extremely well funded R&D in this area, so I’m pretty optimistic.

Airlines
Airlines will face considerable pain for years as the price of fuel rises. There won’t be any alternative fuels available in significant quantity for at least a decade, leaving the airlines to cut corners, cut flights, merge, and struggle to stay afloat while they wait for a miracle.

The recent rash of bankruptcies among smaller US airlines will probably continue for a while as the entire industry is contracted by rising fuel prices and a recession. Most of the contraction will come from the larger carriers as they fly fewer seats between destinations in a struggle for profitability.

In the longer run we could see these trends continue until airline travel becomes a much smaller volume and higher priced option, a boutique industry that caters to the wealthy and powerful.

US psychological factors
Even though I touched on this to some extent in part 1 of these predictions, I want to address it here as a standalone item, as I think it’s the biggest unknown of all: The overall mindset of the US consumer and voter. Someone commented in response to part 1 and reminded me about Dick Cheney’s (in)famous remark about how the US lifestyle is “not negotiable”, and I think that cuts right to the heart of the matter.

It’s not just a matter of how green and efficient US consumers are willing to be. I see a lot of people making real change. Yes, it isn’t happening with the breadth and depth I would prefer, but it’s there and it’s gaining traction.

No American reading this should think for a nanosecond that this will be easy. We’ve barely done anything in the US to curb our CO2 emissions or oil consumption. It’s not hard to see why–the current “high” gasoline prices here are laughably low compared to those in many other places in the world, and the price on CO2 emissions is precisely $0.

Even something as simple as building smarter homes is a struggle. Many home builders offer endless options for things like setting up entertainment rooms or adding in-ground pools to a new house project, but ask them about beefing up the attic insulation or (horrors!) adding a solar thermal water heating system and you may as well be speaking Neptunian. (I think this is largely due to the inherent business conservatism of many people in the construction business. While it’s arguably an example of a very small group of people creating a large road block, I think it’s representative of the kind of mental barriers we have to knock down.)

But I have to ask: What happens when, as I fully expect, oil prices rise substantially in a few more years? How willing will Americans be to use military force to “secure” a supply of oil? For that matter, will many Americans, who now overwhelming dislike the Iraq War, suddenly and secretly be glad that it bought us free-market access to an immense amount of both oil and natural gas? (And is this what Bush referred to when he talked about how history will judge his Iraq policy favorably?) How many of us will be happy with that exchange of other Americans’ blood for oil? And how willing will some of us be to do it again, rather than negotiate a new lifestyle?

Are you uncomfortable with those questions? How uncomfortable will you be with the answers, if they turn out to be what you and I fear the most?

Summary
By now you’re probably thinking that I’m pretty pessimistic about all these looming energy and environmental challenges and how we’ll deal with them. In fact, I’m confident that we’ll handle all of them–peak oil, global warming, water shortages, and more. It won’t be fun, it won’t be cheap, and we’ll make some truly stupendous mistakes along the way, including a least a couple that will make the current US corn ethanol policies look brilliant by comparison.

The number one thing that gives me hope isn’t the grudging change made by people my age, but the eagerness to attack the problems I saw in the ten classes of middle school students I presented to at Greece Athena here in Rochester. These kids didn’t care how bad the problems were, they didn’t care how much worse the old people of the world were still making them–they wanted everyone to get out of their way so they could get to work fixing them right now.

Sure, a big part of that mindset is naivete–these kids don’t know enough to know what “can’t” be done. Good. Right now we need a little more of that boundless energy and determination and a lot less of the greed and battle-scarred cynicism so rampant in the people currently running the world.