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Comment by istjohn | Hacker News Reader

I'd like to think we won't have any use for natural gas in the not-too-distant future.

Hank Green just posted a video about this recently, and he addresses this. In the past, helium was extracted alongside natural gas, but there is no reason the two need to be linked. As natural gas prices go down and helium prices go up, it makes sense to drill helium pockets only for the helium, and there are a few operations to do exactly this underway.

I'd guess that by the time we are not extracting natural gas it will be economical to source Helium from Jupiter's atmosphere.

It's an important feedstock for producing a wide variety of chemicals, and will likely continue being so.

Why would you think that’s likely?

Boggles my mind how ignorant some people are when it comes to oil and gas. The modern world is not possible without them. No solar panels, no electric cars, no cellphones for everyone and their mom and no food for 10Bn people.

You are absolutely right. I am a lifetime environmentalist, but as I’ve learned I’ve become disenchanted with the current societal direction; it’s more based on ideological foundations than anything that squarely addresses the reality of objective sustainability.

There is so much groupthink (most due to the political manipulation) that you can’t talk to people. They’re so caught up in group messages that they don’t think for themselves or have the data or Mind even get it.

It’s the most worrying thing.

It is entirely possible and we are dead close to the deployment speed of renewables that will get us there with the natural rate of retirement of industrial equipment. Will be there by 2030 latest. People who claim otherwise did not observe the insane rate of production increases of all kinds of renewables-related tech.

But, natural gas will be still produced as an industrial feedstock; annual world consumption of helium, assuming 100% recovery rate (which may be possible or almost possible if supply is tight), can be almost produced from the amount of natural gas consumed for non-energy use worldwide, i.e. as industrial feedstock. Which sort of guarantees availability in the future too.

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