> Indeed, historically, new energy sources have never really replaced 'older' ones.
We don't use whale oil anymore.
You are constraining your history in a single century, and "older energy sources" in a single set of mostly equivalent ones.
We don't use whale oil anymore.
You are constraining your history in a single century, and "older energy sources" in a single set of mostly equivalent ones.
When we talk about our energy needs, scale matters a lot. So yes, when it comes to climate change and energy use, you can ignore the rest of human history completely.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/fossil_fuel?wasredirected=tr...
Also, whale oil was not really used as an energy source anyway, except in lamps.
So it's completely irrelevant to my original point, which is that by and large, until now, in the thermo-industrial civilization, new energy sources have not been used to replace exisiting ones. They have been used to 'grow' the economy (more machines, more people, more production).
Maybe this graph can convince you: https://ourworldindata.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/global...