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I cannot agree. You are stuck in a view that energy needs to be cheap and that energy must be available despite the costs of nuclear reactors for nature and fut

by Andi 15y ago

I cannot agree. You are stuck in a view that energy needs to be cheap and that energy must be available despite the costs of nuclear reactors for nature and future generations. This is the classical view of people who see technical progress as a kind of god given fact or as the natural direction humanity must take.

berntb 15y ago
We are (probably) willing to set aside places for Luddites to live. For now, you can go to North Korea or some other nice place without much energy use... (Be careful when choosing, poor countries have lots of environmental destruction which they can't afford to clean -- it might be bad for your health.) :-) Edit: It is not a false dichotomy; I compared to the only known low-energy societies. My point is that there is no low energy using society, where anyone would want to live (except the local junta). (And the expensive alternative to nuclear is coal, which is arguably worse with its climate effects.)
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- raganwald 15y ago
  This is a false dichotomy. You need not choose between cheap energy and no energy, you can also have expensive energy, and I do not see how expensive energy implies North Korea. (UPDATE: Although you can also have expensive energy that is unpleasant!)
- eliasmacpherson 15y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption#cite_note-19 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption#cite_n... Table for figure 54 World power use by region, 1990–2008, TWh Europe: 2857 US: 4533 pdf warning - albeit free of charge. By your logic - europe is for luddites because it approaches half the consumption of the US per captita.
  - berntb 15y ago
    If you really are going to argue that Europe is a low energy society, sure... :-)
    - eliasmacpherson 15y ago
      No, it's a place that's energy demands are lower, are growing at a lower rate, while offering a comparable standard of living. Why do you keep trying to make a false dichotomy? It's not a binary choice that has to be made.
      - berntb 15y ago
        Yes, the US system seems to have bad incentives and waste energy. At least, compared to Europe. >>Why do you keep trying to make a false dichotomy? I am not, you didn't read read what I argue against. :-) I started by answering a comment by "Andi" above. He/She argued against growth and technical development. Which is just stupid, since pollution and energy use gets less with better economy/technology. (E.g., not so many decades ago there were no cleaning facilities on coal plants and no waste management for cities.)
        eliasmacpherson 15y ago
        I read it a few times before I replied. Andi was making a comment about the costs of energy for us and for future generations. Andi was saying that ignoring the cost for future generations is typical behaviour of people "who see technical progress as a kind of god given fact or as the natural direction humanity must take." You are mistaking that as an argument against all future technical development. It's easy to see that better technology can be more efficient. I disagree that pollution and energy use gets less with better economies and technology as a rule, even if there has been some progress as you mention. EU, US and Asia are all guilty of creating percentage wise more pollution and using percentage wise more energy over the last ten years, have a look at the PDF.
        15y ago
Derbasti 15y ago
I agree. Computers used to be extremely expensive and unwieldy compared to other calculation devices. But they developed past that and their potential is mind-blowing. A similar argument could be made for renewable energy technology.
junklight 15y ago
it's got bugger all to do with any gods or deities. I can't help noticing that the natural tendency of the human species is to expand and adapt - that is what we are. I also notice that the various movements that advocate more basic living patterns have never really caught on. So you are going to have two options: 1) Refuse to do anything about power, let it get more and more expensive until enough people die that you have a solvable problem 2) work on making it cheaper I am sure the greens would say also: 3) everyone chooses to live a more basic quieter life against our natural instincts. Oh and all those nice rich and powerful people will also be joining in and not just taking advantage and I will say good luck with that (oh and if you try to achieve 3 without peoples buy in but rather through legislation you effectively are back to option 1) it's 1 or 2 - and 1 is going to be f@#king awful so let's get working on cheap power
- lispm 15y ago
  The time of cheap power is over. The challenge will be to have enough power at all.
  - berntb 15y ago
    >>The time of cheap power is over. The time of cheap oil seems to be over. For the rest: You know that you don't know what will happen. So why do you make blanket statements like that? For example: Some analysts claim that solar energy will solve all energy problems in ten years. Maybe some of the small fusion projects will work? Thorium? And so on. Edit: Yeah, since Germany has panicked like a herd of cattle, the time limit is so short that there is very little to do. But the way the electricity prices will go, solar will become attractive earlier.
    - lispm 15y ago
      That solar energy is cheap in ten years, does not mean that it is suddenly deployed everywhere. It will take decades to roll that out. Germany plans to roll out the whole set of renewables (wind, hydro, solar, biomass, geothermal, ...) over the next FOURTY years to get from 16% (actually currently it may already be at 20%) near to 100%. Thorium is providing a contribution to generating electricity in an amount worth mentioning when? In fifty years? Thirty? How many Thorium reactors will be online within the next ten years? One? Two? Three? That's nothing that would be contributing to the energy needs we have in 2020.
petercooper 15y ago
This is the classical view of people who see technical progress as a kind of god given fact or as the natural direction humanity must take. It has seemed to be a pretty "natural direction" for humanity so far, at least, and technical progress continues to give humanity so much while costing us so little. To me it seems no more bizarre a view that technical progress is a good direction for humanity to take as believing that education should become better over time, our life expectancy should continue to go up over time, or that, one day, it'd be kinda nice to travel to the stars. All those things need technical progress.
- Andi 15y ago
  Did you see Kubrick's "2001"? Probably no other film gives a better example of the fact that education will be more important than technical progress (especially how it is today: at all costs) at any time. No human being wants to live on a star after he/she has lived there for some generations. Wanna bet?

by Andi 15y ago

berntb 15y ago

We are (probably) willing to set aside places for Luddites to live. For now, you can go to North Korea or some other nice place without much energy use... (Be careful when choosing, poor countries have lots of environmental destruction which they can't afford to clean -- it might be bad for your health.) :-) Edit: It is not a false dichotomy; I compared to the only known low-energy societies. My point is that there is no low energy using society, where anyone would want to live (except the local junta). (And the expensive alternative to nuclear is coal, which is arguably worse with its climate effects.)

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
raganwald 15y ago
This is a false dichotomy. You need not choose between cheap energy and no energy, you can also have expensive energy, and I do not see how expensive energy implies North Korea. (UPDATE: Although you can also have expensive energy that is unpleasant!)
eliasmacpherson 15y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption#cite_note-19 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption#cite_n... Table for figure 54 World power use by region, 1990–2008, TWh Europe: 2857 US: 4533 pdf warning - albeit free of charge. By your logic - europe is for luddites because it approaches half the consumption of the US per captita.
- berntb 15y ago
  If you really are going to argue that Europe is a low energy society, sure... :-)
  - eliasmacpherson 15y ago
    No, it's a place that's energy demands are lower, are growing at a lower rate, while offering a comparable standard of living. Why do you keep trying to make a false dichotomy? It's not a binary choice that has to be made.
    - berntb 15y ago
      Yes, the US system seems to have bad incentives and waste energy. At least, compared to Europe. >>Why do you keep trying to make a false dichotomy? I am not, you didn't read read what I argue against. :-) I started by answering a comment by "Andi" above. He/She argued against growth and technical development. Which is just stupid, since pollution and energy use gets less with better economy/technology. (E.g., not so many decades ago there were no cleaning facilities on coal plants and no waste management for cities.)
      - eliasmacpherson 15y ago
        I read it a few times before I replied. Andi was making a comment about the costs of energy for us and for future generations. Andi was saying that ignoring the cost for future generations is typical behaviour of people "who see technical progress as a kind of god given fact or as the natural direction humanity must take." You are mistaking that as an argument against all future technical development. It's easy to see that better technology can be more efficient. I disagree that pollution and energy use gets less with better economies and technology as a rule, even if there has been some progress as you mention. EU, US and Asia are all guilty of creating percentage wise more pollution and using percentage wise more energy over the last ten years, have a look at the PDF.
        15y ago

Derbasti 15y ago

I agree. Computers used to be extremely expensive and unwieldy compared to other calculation devices. But they developed past that and their potential is mind-blowing. A similar argument could be made for renewable energy technology.

junklight 15y ago

it's got bugger all to do with any gods or deities. I can't help noticing that the natural tendency of the human species is to expand and adapt - that is what we are. I also notice that the various movements that advocate more basic living patterns have never really caught on. So you are going to have two options: 1) Refuse to do anything about power, let it get more and more expensive until enough people die that you have a solvable problem 2) work on making it cheaper I am sure the greens would say also: 3) everyone chooses to live a more basic quieter life against our natural instincts. Oh and all those nice rich and powerful people will also be joining in and not just taking advantage and I will say good luck with that (oh and if you try to achieve 3 without peoples buy in but rather through legislation you effectively are back to option 1) it's 1 or 2 - and 1 is going to be f@#king awful so let's get working on cheap power

lispm 15y ago
The time of cheap power is over. The challenge will be to have enough power at all.
- berntb 15y ago
  >>The time of cheap power is over. The time of cheap oil seems to be over. For the rest: You know that you don't know what will happen. So why do you make blanket statements like that? For example: Some analysts claim that solar energy will solve all energy problems in ten years. Maybe some of the small fusion projects will work? Thorium? And so on. Edit: Yeah, since Germany has panicked like a herd of cattle, the time limit is so short that there is very little to do. But the way the electricity prices will go, solar will become attractive earlier.
  - lispm 15y ago
    That solar energy is cheap in ten years, does not mean that it is suddenly deployed everywhere. It will take decades to roll that out. Germany plans to roll out the whole set of renewables (wind, hydro, solar, biomass, geothermal, ...) over the next FOURTY years to get from 16% (actually currently it may already be at 20%) near to 100%. Thorium is providing a contribution to generating electricity in an amount worth mentioning when? In fifty years? Thirty? How many Thorium reactors will be online within the next ten years? One? Two? Three? That's nothing that would be contributing to the energy needs we have in 2020.

petercooper 15y ago

This is the classical view of people who see technical progress as a kind of god given fact or as the natural direction humanity must take. It has seemed to be a pretty "natural direction" for humanity so far, at least, and technical progress continues to give humanity so much while costing us so little. To me it seems no more bizarre a view that technical progress is a good direction for humanity to take as believing that education should become better over time, our life expectancy should continue to go up over time, or that, one day, it'd be kinda nice to travel to the stars. All those things need technical progress.

Andi 15y ago
Did you see Kubrick's "2001"? Probably no other film gives a better example of the fact that education will be more important than technical progress (especially how it is today: at all costs) at any time. No human being wants to live on a star after he/she has lived there for some generations. Wanna bet?