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I agree somewhat, but even though more devices are electrical or electronic and attached to the grid, they are more efficient. My 42" LED TV is using 95W, less

by eggy 10y ago

I agree somewhat, but even though more devices are electrical or electronic and attached to the grid, they are more efficient. My 42" LED TV is using 95W, less than a 100W light bulb, whereas my old 19" tube color TV in 1978 used more. Mobile phones didn't exist when I was young, and there are certainly a lot of them now even if they are low power devices, so it would be interesting to see electrical usage patterns pre-mobile phones vs. today. The same goes for cars. Cars were using leaded gasoline in the US and getting 8 to 12 mpg, and now 30 to 35 mpg or greater on the highway, but do people drive more frequently, and with single riders? Another question is would any cooling of the total Earth's heat energy be offset by global warming? The thermal differential would be less thereby slowing the migration of heat to the surface?

andruby 10y ago
This assumes that nothing mayor is going to change. What if we somehow build a spaceship route from Earth to Mars and we power it through electricity. How much higher would our consumption be if we launch 10,000 spaceships every day? Or maybe we want to terraform our own planet to counter climate change. These things could use amounts of energy orders of magnitude higher than we use today. I'm sure 100 years ago didn't expect we would launch 100,000 airplane flights every day [0] :) Nor did they think we would send spaceships to Mars. [0] http://www.garfors.com/2014/06/100000-flights-day.html http://www.garfors.com/2014/06/100000-flights-day.html
- dpark 10y ago
  What if we also solve fusion and build a Dyson sphere and farm unicorns for automotive fuel? It seems somewhat unreasonable to assume that our energy usage is going to exponentially increase due to as-yet-unforeseeable future needs and at the same time assume that we'll completely fail to find additional energy sources in the same timeframe.

by eggy 10y ago

andruby 10y ago

This assumes that nothing mayor is going to change. What if we somehow build a spaceship route from Earth to Mars and we power it through electricity. How much higher would our consumption be if we launch 10,000 spaceships every day? Or maybe we want to terraform our own planet to counter climate change. These things could use amounts of energy orders of magnitude higher than we use today. I'm sure 100 years ago didn't expect we would launch 100,000 airplane flights every day [0] :) Nor did they think we would send spaceships to Mars. [0] http://www.garfors.com/2014/06/100000-flights-day.html http://www.garfors.com/2014/06/100000-flights-day.html

dpark 10y ago
What if we also solve fusion and build a Dyson sphere and farm unicorns for automotive fuel? It seems somewhat unreasonable to assume that our energy usage is going to exponentially increase due to as-yet-unforeseeable future needs and at the same time assume that we'll completely fail to find additional energy sources in the same timeframe.