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This is a CS professor doing some naive math and assuming that the energy usage patterns of the past 50 years (an increase of 2% usage each year on average) cou
by skywhopper 3y ago
This is a CS professor doing some naive math and assuming that the energy usage patterns of the past 50 years (an increase of 2% usage each year on average) could or would keep going for the next 1000 years.
- paulmd 3y agoDespite all the scoffing in this thread, they’ve gone on at about that rate for 200+ years now. Expecting a deviation from this is kinda “climate change will slow down in the 2000s and 2010s from green energy” level magical thinking.
- uxp8u61q 3y ago200 years is, what, a thousandth of the duration humans have been on this Earth? 44 billionths of the age of the Earth? It's a blip.
- paulmd 3y agoit’s 1/5th of the period under consideration, which is a pretty reasonable basis for extrapolation not sure how any of those numbers have any relevance to projecting the growth of energy usage under industrialized society lmao. yes, if we extinctify ourselves in the next few decades, or return to an agrarian, pre-industrial existence, the earth will be fine and will eventually return to an equilibrium.
- uxp8u61q 3y agoI would have expected HN users to have learned their lesson after this superconductor fiasco. Expertise in a field grants you no expertise in another.