3 ms·

There's predicting short-term fluctuations and then there's predicting thermodynamic limits. You can blame Malthus for not predicting an efficient way of getti

by baq 3y ago

There's predicting short-term fluctuations and then there's predicting thermodynamic limits. You can blame Malthus for not predicting an efficient way of getting nitrogen out of the atmosphere; this was theoretically possible, the nitrogen was always there, etc. You can't blame a physicist for computing that 2.3% yoy energy production growth boils off Earth's oceans in 400 years. Thermodynamics is a bitch. Unless a magic future technology turns Earth into a heat pump which can push heat back into the Sun.

m_mueller 3y ago
Maybe the growth is just going to happen off-planet soon?
stale2002 3y ago
> You can't blame a physicist for computing that 2.3% yoy energy production growth boils off Earth's oceans in 400 Yes you can. Because baked into this statement is the false premise that energy use (on earth or otherwise. Maybe the concept of energy itself is wrong) would be the limiting factor on economic growth. Just like how if someone did a simple mathematical calculation on horses would be wrong to predict transportation doomsday, so too wrong the physicist may be for predicting energy doomsday.
- baq 3y ago
  There's literally nothing about economics in what I wrote/quoted. That said, if you can figure out how to decouple planetary economic growth - as in, people's lives on the planet getting better, which is the point of having an economy at all, I guess - from planetary energy production growth, I'm listening. I've yet to see an economy-rich energy-poor country; I know that past performance does not predict future results, but we can comfortably say that people need to consume energy in advanced economies to move themselves and goods around, to heat homes and to run their factories and there are certain theoretical thermodynamic efficiency limits to all those things. In some cases, we already have technology operating close to those limits.
  - api 3y ago
    > I've yet to see an economy-rich energy-poor country Past performance usually doesn't predict future results. I'm not aware of any good or service that is not subject to diminishing returns from increased consumption. Keep increasing energy consumption and you start hitting other limiting factors like the availability of other resources, labor, population growth, food, etc. Energy can help with some of those but not all of them and not in a linear relationship. Eventually you hit the ultimate limiter: diminishing marginal utility of wealth itself. At some point you start to max out as a human. There are countries that consume more energy than the USA that are actually poorer and their higher consumption is a function of either climate (lots of HVAC) or the use of old inefficient technology (in which case poverty actually increases consumption). It really looks like the ultimate limits to growth (on Earth) are demand side limits to growth due to leveling off of population. Humans have fewer kids when they have more wealth and/or see more humans around.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
  You call it a false premise, but you make no effort to show how it's false(besides building a strawman). How?
  - stale2002 3y ago
    > but you make no effort to show how it's false I actually did show it, but I am happy to elaborate and explain further. A common thing that malthusians do is just take one single metric, then extrapolate it out, and then yell about a doomsday based on that one metric. One such example is horses. Many decades ago, there were people panicking about an extrapolated line related to horses and transportation. Cities were supposedly going to fall apart, because of all the problems that an ever increasing amount of horse usage would cause. We know this to be false, of course, because as our transportation usage increased, we used technology to switch to a new form of transportation (cars), which allowed us to continue to increase our transportation usage, without any of the problems that were predicted via a nieve extrapolated line. The obvious parallel and point to such an analogy, would be that an extrapolated line based on one single metric, is the wrong thing to worry about because it doesn't take into account that we can switch to a different thing. So, just like we switched from horses to cars to fulfill increasing amounts of transportation, we also might be able to switch from earth based energy usage, to non earth based energy usage, or to even switch away from the concept of "energy" itself to fulfill increased economic growth. This is relevant to the topic because I was responding to someone who was also extrapolating out lines a whole 400 years into the future. Ergo, that's why I criticized and disagreed with the concept of line extrapolation far into the future, which is something that malthusians like to do a lot.
    - baq 3y ago
      400 years in the future is not that much time in human scale. It's more than a generation, but with some luck your grandchildren's grandchildren will live then, it only takes a few anti-ageing advances, after all. > switch from earth based energy usage, to non earth based energy usage, or to even switch away from the concept of "energy" itself to fulfill increased economic growth. There's techno-optimism, there's sci-fi and there's... I sincerely hope our need for economic growth can be completely satisfied before we need to move on from energy to something else.
Hikikomori 3y ago
Can we shoot the sun with a laser?
yetihehe 3y ago
> Unless a magic future technology turns Earth into a heat pump which can push heat back into the Sun You mean like those panels[0] which radiate heat in specific infrared band in which atmosphere is transparent? We don't need to push energy into the sun, just out of atmosphere into the coldness of space. [0] https://www.skycoolsystems.com/radiative-cooling-case-study-2/ https://www.skycoolsystems.com/radiative-cooling-case-study-...
- baq 3y ago
  Nice tech but 500w/m2 is… not too much in the limit. If you operate a few thousand multiple dozen TW fusion plants, these won’t matter much unless you plaster Sahara with them. Maybe.
  - yetihehe 3y ago
    It's only a start, there may be better technologies when we actuallu do have TW-scale fusion plants. Like TW-scale heat pumps using nanopatterned laser emitters to get rid of the heat at super high temperatures (remember, that energy emitted is temperature^4 [0]). There already are technologies for this, but we don't need them yet. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan%E2%80%93Boltzmann_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan%E2%80%93Boltzmann_law
api 3y ago
Of course 2.3% Y/Y energy production growth on Earth is impossible. That means it won't happen. The question is how it won't happen. Malthusians assume it won't happen in a destructive, collapse kind of way. They assume there's a wall and the system will mindlessly accelerate toward it and then, on impact, will die. Malthusians deny the existence of intelligence, more or less. They model life as a non-adaptive physical system. So how else might it not happen? Two possibilities, both of which could happen: decoupling of energy growth from GDP and continuing of growth off-world. Efficiency increase could go a long way. We are not even close to efficiency limits for... pretty much anything.
- baq 3y ago
  > Efficiency increase could go a long way. We are not even close to efficiency limits for... pretty much anything. Hard disagree. We're within 2-3x improvement of basically everything. This hardly helps at all if growth must continue. My argument is growth can't continue and crucially it won't continue... > That means it won't happen. The question is how it won't happen. ...to the dismay of economists, but I think on that we actually agree.
  - api 3y ago
    I'm arguing against Malthusian doomerism. I'm not necessarily arguing that growth can continue forever on Earth, though it can probably continue longer than Malthusians predict. At some point Earth has to plateau. That's fine except for the fact that all our economic systems depend on eternal number go up. I do think that will be a crisis mid-late 21st century. My hope is that our civilization doesn't eat itself because banks can't operate the way they're accustomed to operating. I personally think self-inflicted wounds are a more likely cause for our civilization collapsing than limits to growth directly. We could start to plateau (on Earth at least) and be totally fine but nuke ourselves because we can't deal with the implications for our socioeconomic systems and elect a bunch of populist imbeciles.

by baq 3y ago

m_mueller 3y ago

Maybe the growth is just going to happen off-planet soon?

stale2002 3y ago

> You can't blame a physicist for computing that 2.3% yoy energy production growth boils off Earth's oceans in 400 Yes you can. Because baked into this statement is the false premise that energy use (on earth or otherwise. Maybe the concept of energy itself is wrong) would be the limiting factor on economic growth. Just like how if someone did a simple mathematical calculation on horses would be wrong to predict transportation doomsday, so too wrong the physicist may be for predicting energy doomsday.

baq 3y ago
There's literally nothing about economics in what I wrote/quoted. That said, if you can figure out how to decouple planetary economic growth - as in, people's lives on the planet getting better, which is the point of having an economy at all, I guess - from planetary energy production growth, I'm listening. I've yet to see an economy-rich energy-poor country; I know that past performance does not predict future results, but we can comfortably say that people need to consume energy in advanced economies to move themselves and goods around, to heat homes and to run their factories and there are certain theoretical thermodynamic efficiency limits to all those things. In some cases, we already have technology operating close to those limits.
- api 3y ago
  > I've yet to see an economy-rich energy-poor country Past performance usually doesn't predict future results. I'm not aware of any good or service that is not subject to diminishing returns from increased consumption. Keep increasing energy consumption and you start hitting other limiting factors like the availability of other resources, labor, population growth, food, etc. Energy can help with some of those but not all of them and not in a linear relationship. Eventually you hit the ultimate limiter: diminishing marginal utility of wealth itself. At some point you start to max out as a human. There are countries that consume more energy than the USA that are actually poorer and their higher consumption is a function of either climate (lots of HVAC) or the use of old inefficient technology (in which case poverty actually increases consumption). It really looks like the ultimate limits to growth (on Earth) are demand side limits to growth due to leveling off of population. Humans have fewer kids when they have more wealth and/or see more humans around.
mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
You call it a false premise, but you make no effort to show how it's false(besides building a strawman). How?
- stale2002 3y ago
  > but you make no effort to show how it's false I actually did show it, but I am happy to elaborate and explain further. A common thing that malthusians do is just take one single metric, then extrapolate it out, and then yell about a doomsday based on that one metric. One such example is horses. Many decades ago, there were people panicking about an extrapolated line related to horses and transportation. Cities were supposedly going to fall apart, because of all the problems that an ever increasing amount of horse usage would cause. We know this to be false, of course, because as our transportation usage increased, we used technology to switch to a new form of transportation (cars), which allowed us to continue to increase our transportation usage, without any of the problems that were predicted via a nieve extrapolated line. The obvious parallel and point to such an analogy, would be that an extrapolated line based on one single metric, is the wrong thing to worry about because it doesn't take into account that we can switch to a different thing. So, just like we switched from horses to cars to fulfill increasing amounts of transportation, we also might be able to switch from earth based energy usage, to non earth based energy usage, or to even switch away from the concept of "energy" itself to fulfill increased economic growth. This is relevant to the topic because I was responding to someone who was also extrapolating out lines a whole 400 years into the future. Ergo, that's why I criticized and disagreed with the concept of line extrapolation far into the future, which is something that malthusians like to do a lot.
  - baq 3y ago
    400 years in the future is not that much time in human scale. It's more than a generation, but with some luck your grandchildren's grandchildren will live then, it only takes a few anti-ageing advances, after all. > switch from earth based energy usage, to non earth based energy usage, or to even switch away from the concept of "energy" itself to fulfill increased economic growth. There's techno-optimism, there's sci-fi and there's... I sincerely hope our need for economic growth can be completely satisfied before we need to move on from energy to something else.

Hikikomori 3y ago

Can we shoot the sun with a laser?

yetihehe 3y ago

> Unless a magic future technology turns Earth into a heat pump which can push heat back into the Sun You mean like those panels[0] which radiate heat in specific infrared band in which atmosphere is transparent? We don't need to push energy into the sun, just out of atmosphere into the coldness of space. [0] https://www.skycoolsystems.com/radiative-cooling-case-study-2/ https://www.skycoolsystems.com/radiative-cooling-case-study-...

baq 3y ago
Nice tech but 500w/m2 is… not too much in the limit. If you operate a few thousand multiple dozen TW fusion plants, these won’t matter much unless you plaster Sahara with them. Maybe.
- yetihehe 3y ago
  It's only a start, there may be better technologies when we actuallu do have TW-scale fusion plants. Like TW-scale heat pumps using nanopatterned laser emitters to get rid of the heat at super high temperatures (remember, that energy emitted is temperature^4 [0]). There already are technologies for this, but we don't need them yet. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan%E2%80%93Boltzmann_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan%E2%80%93Boltzmann_law

api 3y ago

Of course 2.3% Y/Y energy production growth on Earth is impossible. That means it won't happen. The question is how it won't happen. Malthusians assume it won't happen in a destructive, collapse kind of way. They assume there's a wall and the system will mindlessly accelerate toward it and then, on impact, will die. Malthusians deny the existence of intelligence, more or less. They model life as a non-adaptive physical system. So how else might it not happen? Two possibilities, both of which could happen: decoupling of energy growth from GDP and continuing of growth off-world. Efficiency increase could go a long way. We are not even close to efficiency limits for... pretty much anything.

baq 3y ago
> Efficiency increase could go a long way. We are not even close to efficiency limits for... pretty much anything. Hard disagree. We're within 2-3x improvement of basically everything. This hardly helps at all if growth must continue. My argument is growth can't continue and crucially it won't continue... > That means it won't happen. The question is how it won't happen. ...to the dismay of economists, but I think on that we actually agree.
- api 3y ago
  I'm arguing against Malthusian doomerism. I'm not necessarily arguing that growth can continue forever on Earth, though it can probably continue longer than Malthusians predict. At some point Earth has to plateau. That's fine except for the fact that all our economic systems depend on eternal number go up. I do think that will be a crisis mid-late 21st century. My hope is that our civilization doesn't eat itself because banks can't operate the way they're accustomed to operating. I personally think self-inflicted wounds are a more likely cause for our civilization collapsing than limits to growth directly. We could start to plateau (on Earth at least) and be totally fine but nuke ourselves because we can't deal with the implications for our socioeconomic systems and elect a bunch of populist imbeciles.