Here's a link to a talk from an associate professor doing an estimation of how much metals are needed to switch to renewable energy: https://youtu.be/MBVmnKuBocc?t=2406
What experts? Power to gas has been really energy inefficient with little sign of improving from what I know. It can't really compete with pumped hydro even where pumped hydro makes less to no sense it seems.
Definitely not a panacaea, and super-inefficient, but that's OK if we're just using it for storage/transportation.
Imagine if all the passengers on the Titanic had nuclear weapons. That’s the situation we’re in. And there are no lifeboats.
We can adapt to climate change. We can create new (clean!) energy sources.
Solar is getting more efficient every year. There are new storage solutions appearing every year.
As TFA says, despair is not the answer. We can (and will) overcome all these problems.
Don't make the mistake of confusing energy use with quality of life.
People like to make such alarmist statement around standard of living but we should instead ask ourselves what makes for quality of life.
A good example is planned obsolescence in technology: it greatly increases energy usage and pollution without making consumers happier (on the contrary they hate it)
Hell at this point whoever does will just conquer whoever doesn't. Just like the industrial revolution let whoever burn coal take over the rest. I'm hoping to be in a country that isn't conquered, but the west seems to have entered a death spiral of self delusion.
This is still theory unless they actually use it for that.
Also, Russia's own Kursk 2 isn't very far from the captured one. They could turn that into a dirty bomb too. Recency bias on a threat shouldn't overwhelm normal analysis.
Where I live is at risk of declining political stability in the near future. I don't worry about living next to a nuclear power plant because I'm worried about maintenance or operational safety or whatever, I worry about what happens when a thousand men with machetes and an apocalyptic ideology show up. And perhaps you look at the news in your country and wonder if you also may be heading towards declining political stability.
Note my example was also nuclear. I don't know what you're countering with this.
Also, nuclear plants can be a target for plenty of states or groups that don’t have nuclear weapons like terrorists.
As for your second claim: So can hydro plants, causing enormous destruction. So? Secure the vulnerable asset, create defensive and preventative strategies. You don't go through life not building genuinely useful things because somewhere, somehow, somebody might aim to do them harm. The logic is absurd if taken to any other level. For example, I should never buy or build a house because some group of landless lunatics might coalesce and try to take it from me one day. Better to not have my own useful home in the first place then? Absurd.
Maybe we will rise to the challenge and go green on these, I'm not convinced yet but I am definitely not ruling it out.
When it comes to optimism, it boils down to two distinct modes. Necessity is the mother of invention. Less energy, stuff and stimulation will be good for most people in wealthy countries.
Fossil fuels will decline, we will make some cool new stuff that makes that decline easier, we will demand less stuff and use of energy. This doesn't sound so bad. Hopefully we will move into something akin to Solarpunk + cottage core. A declined future that is more fair. But the pessimist in me feels like that is but fantasy.