After posting a couple of videos with Amory Lovins providing his energy mirage, several commenters indicated they would like to hear and see a different point of view.

Unlike Amory, David MacKay is a physicist who likes to use real numbers and simple arithmetic to illustrate the scale of the challenge of replacing the power that human society has given its members through the action of digging up the energy stored by natural processes over millions of years in the form of easily burned hydrocarbons like coal, oil and natural gas. He is the author of Sustainable Energy – without the hot air and maintains a blog of the same title.

MacKay does not wave his hands and expect magic; he carefully observes reality, records data, and puts that data together with simple equations to draw pictures that help his audience understand so that they can choose a viable path with full knowledge of the obstacles they will face in achieving their goals.

It would be great to someday watch a discussion between Lovins and MacKay.