Re: [External] Re: 10g residential CPE

[Matthew Petach <mpetach () netflight com>]

On Sun, Dec 27, 2020 at 12:28 PM Mark Tinka <mark.tinka () seacom com> wrote:

> On 12/27/20 21:56, Keith Medcalf wrote:
>
> > Me too.  On top of that, diesel and gasoline are pretty reliable.
> Though some people may argue about "renewables" the fact is that it is all
> a matter of time-frame.  Solar power, for example, is not renewable.  Once
> it is all used up, it will not "renew" itself -- and this "using up"
> process is quite independent of our usage of it, as it happens.  The time
> to depletion may be somewhat long, but it still has a time to depletion.
> Oil and Gas, however, is a "renewable" resource and as a mere physical and
> chemical process it is occurring at this very moment.
>
> Well, the sun can't be "used up". You just have to wait 12hrs - 15hrs
> before you can see it again :-).


Mark,

I think you may have misunderstood Keith's comment about
it being "all a matter of time-frame."

He's right--when the sun consumes all the hydrogen in
the hydrogen-to-helium fusion process and begins to
expand into a red dwarf, that's it; there's no going
backwards, no putting the genie back into the bottle,
no "renewing" the sun.  It's purely a one-way trip.

Now, as far as humans go, we're far more likely to be
extinct due to other reasons before we come anywhere
near to that point.

But as far as the physics goes, the conversion of biomatter
into petrochemicals in the ground is more "renewable" than
the conversion of hydrogen into helium in the sun.

It's just that we're far more likely to hit the near-term
shortage crunch of petrochemicals in the ground than
we are the longer-term exhaustion of hydrogen in the
core of the sun.   ;)

Matt