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One thing I notice is the assumption of unlimited exponential growth by 2% per year. That's a huge fallacy. Quick check, yeah, 1.02^1031 = 735,829,316. I'm pret

One thing I notice is the assumption of unlimited exponential growth by 2% per year. That's a huge fallacy. Quick check, yeah, 1.02^1031 = 735,829,316. I'm pretty sure we will be using magnitudes more energy than today because we're more people and hopefully with better living standards for everyone. But even then that's a lot. And on that scale I'm not entirely sure where the whole energy should go to... Maybe produce mass/objects out of it? If we reach peaked our energy consumption in merely 250 years, that's less than 150 times our current consumption. I didn't do the math, but would date to suggest this gives us a few years more time on this planet.

Guvante 3y ago
Was curious so did the math backwards assuming the previous 1000 years had a 2% growth rate. The world used 9,717 million tons of oil equivalent in 2017. Plugging in our growth rate that would mean the world used the equivalent of 13 tons of oil in 986 which is 515.84 million BTU. US residents making <$20k and having wood as their primary heating fuel source use 50 million BTU of wood a year. While we can argue specifics 10 households worth of fuel sounds a little low for a world with a population of 390 million.