7 ms·

Similar things were predicted in the 70s but new sources of energy and improvements in productivity invalidated those predictions. Obviously at some point limit

Similar things were predicted in the 70s but new sources of energy and improvements in productivity invalidated those predictions. Obviously at some point limits will kick in (unless we can expand to other planets) but what to do about that is more of a political question than a scientific one. I personally think it is more appealing to attempt expanding the limits, as we've done in the past, than to pre-emptively adopt austerity measures to live within estimated limits.

llsf 4y ago
Would law of physics kick in ? If it takes thousands of years to produce oil/gas/coal, and months to extract and consume it... then what political solution do have ? My concern is that we might hit an energy crisis (Russia/Ukraine is just the tip of the iceberg). We need oil/gas/coal for everything around us (clothes, transportation, heat, cement, iron, energy). For energy we could use nuclear for baseline, and some renewable. For iron, we could use hydrogen instead of coal (see above for energy) For cement, we could electricity (see above for energy) For heat we could use electricity (and better insulation) (see above for energy) For transportation we could use electricity for ground transportation (trains, trucks, cars, light mobility) and keep the planes on oil, hydrogen, etc. For clothes... well we could use the rest of oil left. Our needs in energy are growing, and the reserve or oil/gas/coal is finite and even if there are still a lot available, it might be a long tail and so too expensive to extract. We might need to plan for a shortage (or too expensive) oil/gas/coal. Renewable is nice, but the amount of energy needed to replace oil/gas/coal is just massive, we cannot produce and install renewable fast enough. We need hundreds more nuclear reactors, just for US alone. This is likely a national security question. In that sense it is a political question based on physic emergency.
- verinus 4y ago
  and as far as I read nuclear fuel isn't endless either...
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - llsf 4y ago
    "The fission of 1 g of uranium or plutonium per day liberates about 1 MW. This is the energy equivalent of 3 tons of coal or about 600 gallons of fuel oil per day, which when burned produces approximately 1/4 tonne of carbon dioxide." https://www2.lbl.gov/abc/wallchart/chapters/14/1.html https://www2.lbl.gov/abc/wallchart/chapters/14/1.html Uranium is everywhere, enriching (separate 235 from 238) is a mechanical process (no chemistry involved). "Uranium is a naturally occurring element with an average concentration of 2.8 parts per million in the Earth's crust. Traces of it occur almost everywhere. It is more abundant than gold, silver or mercury, about the same as tin and slightly less abundant than cobalt, lead or molybdenum." https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/mining-of-uranium/uranium-mining-overview.aspx https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-c... And its "combustion" is carbon free. Nuclear power plants works exactly like coal or gas ones. A big boiler. Water is used to "slow" the neutrons to keep the reaction going, and also use to transport the heat. Nuclear technology and engineering is quite impressive.
- incrudible 4y ago
  Electricity can be turned into gas. People do not need to live like US suburbanites. As fossil fuels deplete, this will happen automatically, through the price mechanism. That said, fossil fuels are nowhere near to depletion and may well last for centuries.
  - dane-pgp 4y ago
    To give a recent estimate[0], here's what McKinsey (the big management consultancy) has to say: > Global fossil-fuels demand is projected to peak between 2023–2025, accounting for a dwindling share of energy use, with oil production dropping by 55 percent and gas production by 70 percent in 2050 You're right that fossil fuels won't be depleted, and they will still be burnt long after their peak, but I don't imagine fossil fuels being extracted at scale next century. [0] https://www.forestvalley.org/for-companies https://www.forestvalley.org/for-companies
  - weatherlite 4y ago
    > That said, fossil fuels are nowhere near to depletion and may well last for centuries. They ARE getting more expensive (see U.S shale oil in the last decade) because the best spots are always mined first. Once gone you have to dig deeper and harder and use increasingly more complex and expensive methods to extract it. At some point you will get negative return on energy - so even if it is there it will be wasteful to extract.
    - incrudible 4y ago
      > They ARE getting more expensive Good.
- weatherlite 4y ago
  We can all try consuming less. I'm hoping the market will have to correct us all out of sheer shortage. E.g gas for the car, meat and flight will get too expensive for many people. At some point it will probably happen I'm just hoping we'll get there while we can still correct our future. Is meat, a car and cheap holidays worth destroying the planet and ravaging through the precious resources we have left? Very doubtful. We can use trains, eat more beans/soy and go to nearest beach/mountain where we live.
mellavora 4y ago
> Similar things were predicted in the 70s but new sources of energy and improvements in productivity invalidated those predictions. ok, cool. So you've identified the limits (energy and productivity). Are you sure productivity has grown? Is this growth sustainable? For example, agriculture. Highly dependent on rapidly disappearing resources Like i.e. dirt. If you look at erosion rates in the US, we are on track to run out of soil by end of century. The petro-chemical fueled "green revolution" exhausts and kills biodiversity, leading to soil death in a century-- and we are 50 years into this. Water. See "US Drought Monitor". So have we really achieved long-term (> 100 year) productivity improvements in agriculture?
- pharke 4y ago
  A key insight into agriculture is that the main reason we spread our farms out over massive areas of land is because it is simply more economical. If you think about it from first principles, farming outdoors has major flaws the biggest of which is seasonality. Most crops mature in a handful of months but must be grown only at specific times of the year in order to maximize yield. Doing this out in the open puts you at the mercy of nature. Besides the limited growing season you also have to deal with losses due to weather, pests, competing plants (weeds), and other local conditions like drought or soil quality. The only reason we do it is because it's cheap. It requires less initial cost to set up and less energy input. If you were to redesign the process you could conceivably build massive greenhouses to control conditions. If you had surplus energy you could also actively heat, cool and light these greenhouses. From a quick look, greenhouse conditions can produce 15 times more yield per acre. They reduce wastage by a comparably large amount as well since half of produce is thrown away due to cosmetic blemishes. They would also drastically reduce the amount of fertilizer and pesticide needed. I think you could drive yields even higher with round the clock lighting, studies as well as practical experience from farmers in northern territories have shown that longer daylight hours allow plants to mature much more rapidly. An ideal farming setup to me would look like hectares of greenhouses located next to a nuclear power plant that can provide heated water for keeping them warm and cheap power for cooling and lighting.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  > The petro-chemical fueled "green revolution" exhausts and kills biodiversity, leading to soil death in a century Interesting. Is this version of Capitalism better described ad Vandalism?
natmaka 4y ago
I petition that the most pertinent predictions from the 70s came with works such as 'Future shock': there is "too much change in too short a period of time" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_Shock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_Shock ) and the "small is beautiful" motto, which were inherited from a more generic analysis published by L. Kohr ~20 years before ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_Kohr#Philosophy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_Kohr#Philosophy ) In a few words: there is too much of everything (size, density, speed, frequency...): no human group can anymore understand the current state of affairs quickly and correctly enough to be able to predict and therefore to plan adequately. In such a light the PLAN proposed by the authors may difficult to pursue.

llsf 4y ago

Would law of physics kick in ? If it takes thousands of years to produce oil/gas/coal, and months to extract and consume it... then what political solution do have ? My concern is that we might hit an energy crisis (Russia/Ukraine is just the tip of the iceberg). We need oil/gas/coal for everything around us (clothes, transportation, heat, cement, iron, energy). For energy we could use nuclear for baseline, and some renewable. For iron, we could use hydrogen instead of coal (see above for energy) For cement, we could electricity (see above for energy) For heat we could use electricity (and better insulation) (see above for energy) For transportation we could use electricity for ground transportation (trains, trucks, cars, light mobility) and keep the planes on oil, hydrogen, etc. For clothes... well we could use the rest of oil left. Our needs in energy are growing, and the reserve or oil/gas/coal is finite and even if there are still a lot available, it might be a long tail and so too expensive to extract. We might need to plan for a shortage (or too expensive) oil/gas/coal. Renewable is nice, but the amount of energy needed to replace oil/gas/coal is just massive, we cannot produce and install renewable fast enough. We need hundreds more nuclear reactors, just for US alone. This is likely a national security question. In that sense it is a political question based on physic emergency.

verinus 4y ago
and as far as I read nuclear fuel isn't endless either...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- llsf 4y ago
  "The fission of 1 g of uranium or plutonium per day liberates about 1 MW. This is the energy equivalent of 3 tons of coal or about 600 gallons of fuel oil per day, which when burned produces approximately 1/4 tonne of carbon dioxide." https://www2.lbl.gov/abc/wallchart/chapters/14/1.html https://www2.lbl.gov/abc/wallchart/chapters/14/1.html Uranium is everywhere, enriching (separate 235 from 238) is a mechanical process (no chemistry involved). "Uranium is a naturally occurring element with an average concentration of 2.8 parts per million in the Earth's crust. Traces of it occur almost everywhere. It is more abundant than gold, silver or mercury, about the same as tin and slightly less abundant than cobalt, lead or molybdenum." https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/mining-of-uranium/uranium-mining-overview.aspx https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-c... And its "combustion" is carbon free. Nuclear power plants works exactly like coal or gas ones. A big boiler. Water is used to "slow" the neutrons to keep the reaction going, and also use to transport the heat. Nuclear technology and engineering is quite impressive.
incrudible 4y ago
Electricity can be turned into gas. People do not need to live like US suburbanites. As fossil fuels deplete, this will happen automatically, through the price mechanism. That said, fossil fuels are nowhere near to depletion and may well last for centuries.
- dane-pgp 4y ago
  To give a recent estimate[0], here's what McKinsey (the big management consultancy) has to say: > Global fossil-fuels demand is projected to peak between 2023–2025, accounting for a dwindling share of energy use, with oil production dropping by 55 percent and gas production by 70 percent in 2050 You're right that fossil fuels won't be depleted, and they will still be burnt long after their peak, but I don't imagine fossil fuels being extracted at scale next century. [0] https://www.forestvalley.org/for-companies https://www.forestvalley.org/for-companies
- weatherlite 4y ago
  > That said, fossil fuels are nowhere near to depletion and may well last for centuries. They ARE getting more expensive (see U.S shale oil in the last decade) because the best spots are always mined first. Once gone you have to dig deeper and harder and use increasingly more complex and expensive methods to extract it. At some point you will get negative return on energy - so even if it is there it will be wasteful to extract.
  - incrudible 4y ago
    > They ARE getting more expensive Good.
weatherlite 4y ago
We can all try consuming less. I'm hoping the market will have to correct us all out of sheer shortage. E.g gas for the car, meat and flight will get too expensive for many people. At some point it will probably happen I'm just hoping we'll get there while we can still correct our future. Is meat, a car and cheap holidays worth destroying the planet and ravaging through the precious resources we have left? Very doubtful. We can use trains, eat more beans/soy and go to nearest beach/mountain where we live.

mellavora 4y ago

> Similar things were predicted in the 70s but new sources of energy and improvements in productivity invalidated those predictions. ok, cool. So you've identified the limits (energy and productivity). Are you sure productivity has grown? Is this growth sustainable? For example, agriculture. Highly dependent on rapidly disappearing resources Like i.e. dirt. If you look at erosion rates in the US, we are on track to run out of soil by end of century. The petro-chemical fueled "green revolution" exhausts and kills biodiversity, leading to soil death in a century-- and we are 50 years into this. Water. See "US Drought Monitor". So have we really achieved long-term (> 100 year) productivity improvements in agriculture?

pharke 4y ago
A key insight into agriculture is that the main reason we spread our farms out over massive areas of land is because it is simply more economical. If you think about it from first principles, farming outdoors has major flaws the biggest of which is seasonality. Most crops mature in a handful of months but must be grown only at specific times of the year in order to maximize yield. Doing this out in the open puts you at the mercy of nature. Besides the limited growing season you also have to deal with losses due to weather, pests, competing plants (weeds), and other local conditions like drought or soil quality. The only reason we do it is because it's cheap. It requires less initial cost to set up and less energy input. If you were to redesign the process you could conceivably build massive greenhouses to control conditions. If you had surplus energy you could also actively heat, cool and light these greenhouses. From a quick look, greenhouse conditions can produce 15 times more yield per acre. They reduce wastage by a comparably large amount as well since half of produce is thrown away due to cosmetic blemishes. They would also drastically reduce the amount of fertilizer and pesticide needed. I think you could drive yields even higher with round the clock lighting, studies as well as practical experience from farmers in northern territories have shown that longer daylight hours allow plants to mature much more rapidly. An ideal farming setup to me would look like hectares of greenhouses located next to a nuclear power plant that can provide heated water for keeping them warm and cheap power for cooling and lighting.
ClumsyPilot 4y ago
> The petro-chemical fueled "green revolution" exhausts and kills biodiversity, leading to soil death in a century Interesting. Is this version of Capitalism better described ad Vandalism?

natmaka 4y ago

I petition that the most pertinent predictions from the 70s came with works such as 'Future shock': there is "too much change in too short a period of time" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_Shock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_Shock ) and the "small is beautiful" motto, which were inherited from a more generic analysis published by L. Kohr ~20 years before ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_Kohr#Philosophy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_Kohr#Philosophy ) In a few words: there is too much of everything (size, density, speed, frequency...): no human group can anymore understand the current state of affairs quickly and correctly enough to be able to predict and therefore to plan adequately. In such a light the PLAN proposed by the authors may difficult to pursue.