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>> Huh, its almost like infinite growth is impossible in our context of the natural world. > Eh, only within the current context of society and technology. >

>> Huh, its almost like infinite growth is impossible in our context of the natural world. > Eh, only within the current context of society and technology. > For example, most of the energy from the sun that hit our planet are just basically wasted. Meanwhile, the sun uselessly radiate away energy that's not even hitting the planet. You can't magick away the problem with sci-fi fantasies. Those technologies don't actually exist and (with a fairly high probability) may never exist. And in any case, a bigger finite does not an infinite make.

kiba 4y ago
We already have the technology. Just not the economy to take advantage of it. Solar panels, satellites and factories are nothing new to us.
- tablespoon 4y ago
  > We already have the technology. Just not the economy to take advantage of it. Solar panels, satellites and factories are nothing new to us. We don't have the technology to pave the planet in solar panels, because we don't have the technology to make it cost effective. Also the solution to the "problem" of "most of the energy from the sun that hit our planet are just basically wasted" is to literally destroy the environment in an industrialization project. Solving the "problem" of "...the sun uselessly radiate away energy that's not even hitting the planet," is also limited by that cost effectiveness problem AND the problem of we don't have the technology to do anything with energy collected by satellites, especially ones half-way around the solar system. Then there's the issue of putting up a few trillion solar power satellites still would allow the sun to "uselessly radiate away energy that's not even hitting the planet."
  - myshpa 4y ago
    > We don't have the technology to pave the planet in solar panels, We'd need only 254x254 km of solar panels for the whole world. https://www.dlr.de/tt/Portaldata/41/Resources/dokumente/institut/system/projects/Ecobalance_of_a_Solar_Electricity_Transmission.pdf https://www.dlr.de/tt/Portaldata/41/Resources/dokumente/inst... - page 25
    - tablespoon 4y ago
      > We'd need only 254x254 km of solar panels for the whole world. While interesting, that's an answer to a different problem/challenge than I was responding to.

kiba 4y ago

We already have the technology. Just not the economy to take advantage of it. Solar panels, satellites and factories are nothing new to us.

tablespoon 4y ago
> We already have the technology. Just not the economy to take advantage of it. Solar panels, satellites and factories are nothing new to us. We don't have the technology to pave the planet in solar panels, because we don't have the technology to make it cost effective. Also the solution to the "problem" of "most of the energy from the sun that hit our planet are just basically wasted" is to literally destroy the environment in an industrialization project. Solving the "problem" of "...the sun uselessly radiate away energy that's not even hitting the planet," is also limited by that cost effectiveness problem AND the problem of we don't have the technology to do anything with energy collected by satellites, especially ones half-way around the solar system. Then there's the issue of putting up a few trillion solar power satellites still would allow the sun to "uselessly radiate away energy that's not even hitting the planet."
- myshpa 4y ago
  > We don't have the technology to pave the planet in solar panels, We'd need only 254x254 km of solar panels for the whole world. https://www.dlr.de/tt/Portaldata/41/Resources/dokumente/institut/system/projects/Ecobalance_of_a_Solar_Electricity_Transmission.pdf https://www.dlr.de/tt/Portaldata/41/Resources/dokumente/inst... - page 25
  - tablespoon 4y ago
    > We'd need only 254x254 km of solar panels for the whole world. While interesting, that's an answer to a different problem/challenge than I was responding to.