There is a very prevalent group of people on HN who don't deny that global warming is happening, but strongly deny that it is a serious problem.
This group deeply believes that technology will solve their problems, no matter how large. All that is required is believing in this strongly enough. There is a nearly rabid belief that everything will be fine because "technology" will find a way.
What these people fail to recognize is that technology is a function of energy. This comes across pretty clearly in Vaclav Smil's Energy and Civilization. Technology has felt magical in the last 250 years because we have had a tremendous amount of energy.
There is a very common myth, one I used to believe myself, that magically in the age of reason man woke up and started creating amazing things. I think everyone in tech has been at least someone seduced by this vision. The cover of SICP has a wizard on it!
What more accurately happened is that we started extracting fossil fuels, and that let to us being able to to magical things, including finding more fossil fuels faster. Even the earliest hunter gathers were able to harness fire and benefit from it. The first agrarian societies learned how to use the sun to build truly solar powered economies. We live in the age of fossil fuels, and as much as we wish it to be true, we are not able to build renewables on a scale and timeline to even begin to replace the magic of fossil fuels. In fact we continue to globally use more of every fossil fuel every year. Renewables are only able to supplement our insatiable hunger for energy.
So technology can't magically save us from our energy problems because energy is the magic that makes technology happen. But for many here such statements border on heresy.
It's less that the argument is heretical, and more that it's based on some false premises.
First, it's possible to accept that climate change is a huge (and largely man-made) problem, and also believe technology will fix it.
Second, you're talking about a centuries-scale trend about the relationship between technology and energy, and we're talking about the technological breakthroughs that are possible in the next couple decades if we all work together on this important problem. While it may be true that energy begets technology, technology also begets technology.
Thirdly, you seem to be under-estimating how much energy we can actually get from the Sun with today's technology. We have the tech and economic output right now to completely supply our energy demand with the sun within 10-20 years via worldwide solar farms and a trans-continental grid (so the daytime side can provide for the nighttime side). Again, if the entire planet comes together to make that happen. The only thing we don't have is the will. Telling people "we're doomed, it's too late, we'll never have the technology because of this flimsy historical correlation, just lay down and die" harms the global will to fight the problem, rather than helps.
There is also a major group that would be severely disappointed if technology did magically save us (say if 10 years to fusion was actually this decade), because it would deprave them of the possibility to solve other societal problems or push through reforms using climate change as a lever.
This group deeply believes that technology will solve their problems, no matter how large. All that is required is believing in this strongly enough. There is a nearly rabid belief that everything will be fine because "technology" will find a way.
What these people fail to recognize is that technology is a function of energy. This comes across pretty clearly in Vaclav Smil's Energy and Civilization. Technology has felt magical in the last 250 years because we have had a tremendous amount of energy.
There is a very common myth, one I used to believe myself, that magically in the age of reason man woke up and started creating amazing things. I think everyone in tech has been at least someone seduced by this vision. The cover of SICP has a wizard on it!
What more accurately happened is that we started extracting fossil fuels, and that let to us being able to to magical things, including finding more fossil fuels faster. Even the earliest hunter gathers were able to harness fire and benefit from it. The first agrarian societies learned how to use the sun to build truly solar powered economies. We live in the age of fossil fuels, and as much as we wish it to be true, we are not able to build renewables on a scale and timeline to even begin to replace the magic of fossil fuels. In fact we continue to globally use more of every fossil fuel every year. Renewables are only able to supplement our insatiable hunger for energy.
So technology can't magically save us from our energy problems because energy is the magic that makes technology happen. But for many here such statements border on heresy.