I wrote:
Unless CF works, in which case everything else will wither away. (At least as a primary source of energy.)
And then I contradicted that:
PV may survive for niche applications. Someone here suggested it might even survive competition with CF, if the price falls enough. That is true . . .
I meant that CF will be the only planetary-scale energy source. I expect people will always use firewood, windup toys, and stuff like windup and shake-up LED flashlights (http://www.foreverflashlights.com/) or PV calculators. We may hang on to hydroelectric dams for a long time, although the network will collapse. Maybe we will develop an application that calls for a terrific amount of electricity right next-door to the dam. Maybe we can use them for super-duper super colliders. I'll bet physicists would have fun with a gigawatt power supply.
I hope there will always be some living museum water-mills, turbine generators, and wind turbines, and of course steam locomotives. But not fission reactors! Cornell University abandoned their 1 MW Fall Creek hydroelectric generator in the 1970. It was vandalized! In 1981 they lovingly restored it. I hope they are still running it 500 years from now. See:
http://www.sustainablecampus.cornell.edu/energy-hydro.htm - Jed
