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> I have always been impressed by the fact that as much solar energy reaches Earth in one hour as we consume in a year. What hope such a statement brings! But l
by yrgulation 4y ago
> I have always been impressed by the fact that as much solar energy reaches Earth in one hour as we consume in a year. What hope such a statement brings! But let’s not get carried away—yet.
> The abundance of deuterium in ordinary water would allow us to have a seemingly
I mean isn't it obvious that we are missing opportunities here? Are we really that complacent that we can't achieve anything on a grand scale anymore? Plant solar panels everywhere that there is not agricultural land and meets the criteria for energy efficiency. Fill in the all the roofs. It's vacant space. Spend billions more on fusion research.
> The merciless growth illustrated above means that in 1400 years from now, any source of energy we harness would have to outshine the sun.
Hopefully by that time we'd be an interplanetary species. Unless we imagine we can keep digging all the way to the core to extract resources down here. When all the good stuff is literally sitting out there waiting for us to plunder.
> Chiefly, continued energy growth will likely be unnecessary if the human population stabilizes.
I doubt our insatiable hunger for more, more, and more will stop anytime soon - even if the numbers stagnate, our egos will grow bigger and bigger and we'll want more and more. It's in our nature. So why not go beyond our planet for that never-ending "want"? Consumer everything that's out there and turn into shiny new crap for down here. Once we are done, eject it into the sun and keep the earth tidy.
- tener 4y agoFeels like a similar methodology here https://xkcd.com/605/ https://xkcd.com/605/
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- iso1631 4y agoIt does, and you can see at the end of his list a tapering of the growth. US energy consumption has grown 1% in the last 10 years, not 1% per year, 1% in total. Now sure, some of that is offset by some shift to imports (energy is expended in China, for the benefit of the US), but not all of it. However had energy use increased at 2.9% since 1990 it would be nearly twice as high as it really is (4.2GToe vs 2.3 in 2018) The Earth as a whole, with rapidly industrialising countries like China and India, global energy use from 1990 to 2018 only increased about 1.5% per year. The world is becoming more efficient, and ultimately there is a limit to consumerism - I personally use less energy today than I did 20 years ago, and I'm sure that's the same for many people in the west. As transport becomes more efficient, there's only so many times you can go on a plane in a year (144 was my own record, but lets say it's 1000), after that point energy use on airplanes can't increase - there just aren't enough hours in the day.
- mlsu 4y agoFilling in the roofs and spending billions amounts to linear growth. (Spend $1, get $1 worth of energy; fill 1 roof, get that area in energy). The argument of the article is that the exponential growth will outshine whatever linear coefficients we throw at it. Even going interplanetary; that is only linear growth -- go to 1 new sun, get 1 new sun of energy! Exponential wins in the end no matter what.
- chii 4y agoIts only linear because the process is linear as you described. There's no reason why we can't have exponential growth - produce a machine which manufactures more of itself. This machine also contains solar panels (and other appendages) to collect resources to replicate itself. Then very soon, the earth will be overrun with such machines, and we can go interplanetary, then consume the sun to go interstellar. At least, whoever that remains after the grey goo takes everything else would go interstellar...
- ncmncm 4y agoOnce we get too big for our britches, the ancient aliens in our way will put us in our place.