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I don’t think most people advocate for indefinite growth of energy usage; when people talk about sustainability of growth they are typically referring to econom

by NickM 4y ago

I don’t think most people advocate for indefinite growth of energy usage; when people talk about sustainability of growth they are typically referring to economic growth. This has often been correlated with energy usage in the past but there’s nothing that says it has to be that way, and indeed there are a number of countries that have shown that decoupling the two is possible: https://ourworldindata.org/energy-gdp-decoupling https://ourworldindata.org/energy-gdp-decoupling

api 4y ago
It tends to be tightly correlated to energy use up to a certain material standard of living. At that point they start to decouple.
- mbbutler 4y ago
  They don't even decouple at high material standards of living. Recent increases to GDP produced emissions too but those new emissions were offset by reductions in emissions of existing industries. This "decoupling" gets us basically nothing because it's not like we can just stop emissions tomorrow since GDP and emissions are "decoupled".
  - epicureanideal 4y ago
    Counter example: if we can make computation 1000x more efficient per teraflop, we could use computers to trivially design drugs to cure cancer etc (just a random example) and yet our energy consumption would not change. GDP may be the wrong measure, but there would be economic growth or standard of living growth for no change in energy consumption.
    - mathgeek 4y ago
      > if we can make computation 1000x more efficient per teraflop, we could use computers yo trivially design new drugs to cure cancer etc You're assuming two things: that cancer and disease can be cured by any feasible increase in computing power (not that outrageous an assumption), and that the energy savings won't be offset by keeping an even older population of disease survivors comfortable and alive. Reality is not as simple as "cure all our ailments and we're good to go".
    - TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
      This has already happened at a higher multiplier. An Apple Watch has more processing power than a Cray 2, but it uses a rechargeable battery instead of a 150kW power supply. The problem is that cycles expand to fill the space available, so another 1000X drop in efficiency would mean new kinds of applications rather than being limited to affordable super computing. While individual computers are far more powerful and use far less energy, the power consumed by computing on Earth as a whole is far higher than it was. (Not even counting energy vampires like crypto.) There's no reason to assume that trend would stop. Displays could easily have much higher resolutions (possibly holographic), IOT could be truly ubiquitous, AI could be in everything, entertainment could be social, interactive, and immersive, and so on.
jillesvangurp 4y ago
There's nothing wrong with energy. It's just that certain ways of producing energy are destroying our planet. Now that we have better and cleaner ways of generating energy, we can resume coming up with creative ways to convert energy into useful things like food, transport, computing power, clean water, etc. There is no shortage of ideas on that front. But we've kind of been sitting on our hands here because energy is an expensive bottleneck. Transitioning all of that to sustainable processes, is the game changing transition that is defining this century. It's happening very rapidly now. And yes, I do believe we are going to see an unprecedented economic boom as well. Last century was nice. This one is going to be better.

by NickM 4y ago

api 4y ago

It tends to be tightly correlated to energy use up to a certain material standard of living. At that point they start to decouple.

mbbutler 4y ago
They don't even decouple at high material standards of living. Recent increases to GDP produced emissions too but those new emissions were offset by reductions in emissions of existing industries. This "decoupling" gets us basically nothing because it's not like we can just stop emissions tomorrow since GDP and emissions are "decoupled".
- epicureanideal 4y ago
  Counter example: if we can make computation 1000x more efficient per teraflop, we could use computers to trivially design drugs to cure cancer etc (just a random example) and yet our energy consumption would not change. GDP may be the wrong measure, but there would be economic growth or standard of living growth for no change in energy consumption.
  - mathgeek 4y ago
    > if we can make computation 1000x more efficient per teraflop, we could use computers yo trivially design new drugs to cure cancer etc You're assuming two things: that cancer and disease can be cured by any feasible increase in computing power (not that outrageous an assumption), and that the energy savings won't be offset by keeping an even older population of disease survivors comfortable and alive. Reality is not as simple as "cure all our ailments and we're good to go".
  - TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
    This has already happened at a higher multiplier. An Apple Watch has more processing power than a Cray 2, but it uses a rechargeable battery instead of a 150kW power supply. The problem is that cycles expand to fill the space available, so another 1000X drop in efficiency would mean new kinds of applications rather than being limited to affordable super computing. While individual computers are far more powerful and use far less energy, the power consumed by computing on Earth as a whole is far higher than it was. (Not even counting energy vampires like crypto.) There's no reason to assume that trend would stop. Displays could easily have much higher resolutions (possibly holographic), IOT could be truly ubiquitous, AI could be in everything, entertainment could be social, interactive, and immersive, and so on.

jillesvangurp 4y ago

There's nothing wrong with energy. It's just that certain ways of producing energy are destroying our planet. Now that we have better and cleaner ways of generating energy, we can resume coming up with creative ways to convert energy into useful things like food, transport, computing power, clean water, etc. There is no shortage of ideas on that front. But we've kind of been sitting on our hands here because energy is an expensive bottleneck. Transitioning all of that to sustainable processes, is the game changing transition that is defining this century. It's happening very rapidly now. And yes, I do believe we are going to see an unprecedented economic boom as well. Last century was nice. This one is going to be better.