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I don't want to doubt we will find some use for more energy but... I think I have all the energy I need to be honest. I don't lack for aluminium or even transa

I don't want to doubt we will find some use for more energy but... I think I have all the energy I need to be honest. I don't lack for aluminium or even transatlantic flights (the most energy intensive think I could think of buying). If I really want to go to X I do. Price doesn't really bother me. Maybe we can use 10x the current supply so everyone can have my lifestyle. But that's still vastly less than a Dyson sphere would produce. For a long time energy was a limiting factor on human development. But I don't think that's true for the average westerner anymore. I want time off and less stress and relationships. Those mostly come down to social structures and information, not GJs...

pixl97 5y ago
>I think I have all the energy I need to be honest. You don't. You only think you do because you are living on borrowed energy, massive amounts of energy stored in carbon over the last billion years. Unleashing this stored energy is going to burn down our planet. So yes, we need way more energy that is not tied to digging up dead dinosaurs. Even more energy if we want to put them back in the ground. And even more if everyone wants clean water. Everyone else that is not a westerner wants lights and water and food too.
- ben_w 5y ago
  PV can give us about 10,000 times our current power even without building a Dyson swarm. Ten billion humans each regularly using a thousand times the power of the average current American could happen, but it’s ten times greater a change to how people live than was reaching modern day American power use relative to the day before the invention of fire (or domestication, whichever came first).
  - m_mueller 5y ago
    Consider that a lot of materials we take for granted today (and throw in the trash when we're done) aren't renewable either and would take more energy to produce if replaced with renewable equivalents. Consider also that in order to grow human population at some point you start to need large amounts of energy to colonize new space, be it planetary, on asteroids or spade stations. If more energy becomes available, demand for it will scale accordingly because of new possibilities.
    - shard 5y ago
      Considering the plummeting birth rate, I don't think it will be necessary to colonize new space to find space for more people, unless we start cloning people en mass.
      - m_mueller 5y ago
        According to Hans Rosling, if birthrates develop everywhere similarly, population will max out at around 10Bn within the next decades, and should then stay stable for a while. 10Bn to reach a somewhat comfortable living standard seems quite a stretch for the home planet based on current (mostly non-renewable) technologies. And a high enough standard is also necessary for the birth rates to stabilize, so it's not like keeping whole continents in poverty would help anyone.
- behringer 5y ago
  We're going to need all the energy we've already consumed in order to put the planet back into a stable climate. Fusion power can't come too soon.
michaelmrose 5y ago
A person living in the year 1400s wouldn't have any method to determine the energy needs of current man I don't see how we can possibly determine what would be sufficient hundreds let alone thousands of years from now. Maybe we will consume vast resources of energy sending people or machines to explore the universe. Maybe we will need it to reshape our home environs. Maybe we will want to produce more people than can be supported on planet earth and profit in the arts and sciences from their contributions? Never in human history has any amount of energy been enough so is simple extrapolation that if civilization continues to grow it will consume more energy.
- LatteLazy 5y ago
  Our lives are shocking similar to those of a 1400 merchant. We have houses with a few rooms, a coach (car) or two, we eat meat a lot. The big differences between us and those merchants (healthcare, communications etc) are matters of technology not energy. Proper sewers and drinking water has added much more to our lives than cars vs coachs. And that's what I see going forwards too: I want a longer healthier life. But that will be a matter of medical discovery, not a CAT scanner than uses 1 million times more power...
  - michaelmrose 5y ago
    We use almost 300x the energy we did in 1800 despite only having 8x as many people. When you order something casually that was manufactured by machines that were manufactured by machines that were manufactured by machines and its shipped across the planet for you to consume that too is energy. We are nearly 40x as energy intensive per capita as as were just 2 centuries ago. If we rewind the clock to 1400 it becomes harder yet to compare because we actually captured so very little energy.
robocat 5y ago
> I think I have all the energy I need to be honest. “2018, global energy-related CO2 emissions rose 1.7% to a historic high of 33.1 Gt CO2.” Only thinking of your electricity or transport needs is missing all the other CO2 sources you rely on for your civilisation. For example you eat: “Globally, the fertiliser industry is responsible for about 1.5% of annual carbon emissions, largely because 95 per cent of production relies on natural gas as a feedstock.”. The easiest proxy for measuring your energy usage is simply the amount you spend annually, which is usually closely related to the amount you earn. Most of our energy usage is hidden throughout our economy, due to our reliance upon our society.
cletus 5y ago
> I don't want to doubt we will find some use for more energy but... I think I have all the energy I need to be honest. Not quite. You have more than enough energy for what you could imagine using it for. But I guarantee you that a greater abundance of cheap energy will create new uses for that energy. That's how its worked for the entire of human history. The amount of energy we're talking about here is mind-boggling, almost incomprehensible. Typically we talk about this in the Kardashev scale (and usually the Sagan normalized variant). The short version of this is that: - A Kardashev-1 (K1) civilization uses all the energy out planet collects from the Sun, estimated at around 10"16 Watts; - A K2 civilization uses all the energy output by the Sun, estimated at 10^26W - A K3 civilization uses all the energy produced by the stars in our galaxy, estimated at 10^36W. We are roughly a K0.6-0.7 civilization on this scale. Human energy consumption I believe is estimated at 10"11W. So a K2 civilization has access to 1 million billion times what we have now. It's like if every person on Earth had access to 140 million times the Earth's energy usage.
- LatteLazy 5y ago
  That's great, but what exactly am I meant to do with 140mil times my current energy ration?

pixl97 5y ago

>I think I have all the energy I need to be honest. You don't. You only think you do because you are living on borrowed energy, massive amounts of energy stored in carbon over the last billion years. Unleashing this stored energy is going to burn down our planet. So yes, we need way more energy that is not tied to digging up dead dinosaurs. Even more energy if we want to put them back in the ground. And even more if everyone wants clean water. Everyone else that is not a westerner wants lights and water and food too.

ben_w 5y ago
PV can give us about 10,000 times our current power even without building a Dyson swarm. Ten billion humans each regularly using a thousand times the power of the average current American could happen, but it’s ten times greater a change to how people live than was reaching modern day American power use relative to the day before the invention of fire (or domestication, whichever came first).
- m_mueller 5y ago
  Consider that a lot of materials we take for granted today (and throw in the trash when we're done) aren't renewable either and would take more energy to produce if replaced with renewable equivalents. Consider also that in order to grow human population at some point you start to need large amounts of energy to colonize new space, be it planetary, on asteroids or spade stations. If more energy becomes available, demand for it will scale accordingly because of new possibilities.
  - shard 5y ago
    Considering the plummeting birth rate, I don't think it will be necessary to colonize new space to find space for more people, unless we start cloning people en mass.
    - m_mueller 5y ago
      According to Hans Rosling, if birthrates develop everywhere similarly, population will max out at around 10Bn within the next decades, and should then stay stable for a while. 10Bn to reach a somewhat comfortable living standard seems quite a stretch for the home planet based on current (mostly non-renewable) technologies. And a high enough standard is also necessary for the birth rates to stabilize, so it's not like keeping whole continents in poverty would help anyone.
behringer 5y ago
We're going to need all the energy we've already consumed in order to put the planet back into a stable climate. Fusion power can't come too soon.

michaelmrose 5y ago

A person living in the year 1400s wouldn't have any method to determine the energy needs of current man I don't see how we can possibly determine what would be sufficient hundreds let alone thousands of years from now. Maybe we will consume vast resources of energy sending people or machines to explore the universe. Maybe we will need it to reshape our home environs. Maybe we will want to produce more people than can be supported on planet earth and profit in the arts and sciences from their contributions? Never in human history has any amount of energy been enough so is simple extrapolation that if civilization continues to grow it will consume more energy.

LatteLazy 5y ago
Our lives are shocking similar to those of a 1400 merchant. We have houses with a few rooms, a coach (car) or two, we eat meat a lot. The big differences between us and those merchants (healthcare, communications etc) are matters of technology not energy. Proper sewers and drinking water has added much more to our lives than cars vs coachs. And that's what I see going forwards too: I want a longer healthier life. But that will be a matter of medical discovery, not a CAT scanner than uses 1 million times more power...
- michaelmrose 5y ago
  We use almost 300x the energy we did in 1800 despite only having 8x as many people. When you order something casually that was manufactured by machines that were manufactured by machines that were manufactured by machines and its shipped across the planet for you to consume that too is energy. We are nearly 40x as energy intensive per capita as as were just 2 centuries ago. If we rewind the clock to 1400 it becomes harder yet to compare because we actually captured so very little energy.

robocat 5y ago

> I think I have all the energy I need to be honest. “2018, global energy-related CO2 emissions rose 1.7% to a historic high of 33.1 Gt CO2.” Only thinking of your electricity or transport needs is missing all the other CO2 sources you rely on for your civilisation. For example you eat: “Globally, the fertiliser industry is responsible for about 1.5% of annual carbon emissions, largely because 95 per cent of production relies on natural gas as a feedstock.”. The easiest proxy for measuring your energy usage is simply the amount you spend annually, which is usually closely related to the amount you earn. Most of our energy usage is hidden throughout our economy, due to our reliance upon our society.

cletus 5y ago

> I don't want to doubt we will find some use for more energy but... I think I have all the energy I need to be honest. Not quite. You have more than enough energy for what you could imagine using it for. But I guarantee you that a greater abundance of cheap energy will create new uses for that energy. That's how its worked for the entire of human history. The amount of energy we're talking about here is mind-boggling, almost incomprehensible. Typically we talk about this in the Kardashev scale (and usually the Sagan normalized variant). The short version of this is that: - A Kardashev-1 (K1) civilization uses all the energy out planet collects from the Sun, estimated at around 10"16 Watts; - A K2 civilization uses all the energy output by the Sun, estimated at 10^26W - A K3 civilization uses all the energy produced by the stars in our galaxy, estimated at 10^36W. We are roughly a K0.6-0.7 civilization on this scale. Human energy consumption I believe is estimated at 10"11W. So a K2 civilization has access to 1 million billion times what we have now. It's like if every person on Earth had access to 140 million times the Earth's energy usage.

LatteLazy 5y ago
That's great, but what exactly am I meant to do with 140mil times my current energy ration?