At the latest meeting of the Richmond Astronomical Society, someone brought up an article in the BBC on the Internet that said that telescopes will be worthless by 2050. The article maintains that global warming, which increases cloudiness, and jet contrails will combine to form a haze that ground telescopes will not be able to penetrate.
Global warming is a serious problem. However, I think that telescopes will be better in 2050. This is because of peak oil. Professor Gerry Gilmore of Cambridge's Institute of Astronomy maintains that air traffic will increase, increasing the number of jet contrails, which produce artificial cirrostratus clouds that obscure the sky. He says, "You get these contrails from the jets. The rate at which they're expanding in terms of their fractional cover of the stratosphere is so large that if predictions are right, in 40 years it won't be worth having telescopes on Earth anymore - it's that soon."
No, Professor Gilmore. You did not take Peak Oil into consideration. There may not be any jet planes flying in 2050 to make contrails with. These planes require fuel, and you assume that jet travel is just simply goinjg to increase without limit. Instead, oil production will peak, probably between 2008 and 2010, and decline from that point on. By 2040, only a fraction of today's oil will be produced. From this must come the fuel for jet aircraft. It follows that far fewer aircraft will be flying, unless some way can be found of powering aircraft other than with petroleum products. So actually, the contrail situation will be better.
Global warming will wane, also. It is fueled by fossil fuels, and these will decline after 2010, and so will global warming. There may be some temporary increase due to coal, but if clean, renewable alternative fuels are developed, these will dominate in 2050, meaning a sharp decrease in CO2 emission. Further, energy prices are sure to rise dramatically, due to peak oil, and so people will invent new means of conserving electricity, and hence generation of power from power plants. These may include such things as a device that will turn out lights unless people are in the room. If these proliferates, the cities will turn dark at night, and the stars will come out.
All of this means much better viewing in 2050 than now. Don't move or take apart Lick, Wilson, or Palomar Observatories! These telescopes will be much more useful functioning under beautifully starry skies in the year 2050. That is, unless peak oil and an energy crunch prevents power for clock drives and equipment from coming into the observatories.
