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Making energy too cheap to meter

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Re: Making energy too cheap to meter

#31

Post by manicdee »

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #27
skybrian wrote: post #17

> I like an analogy I heard recently […] If a man is coming at you with the intent to do you harm, it hardly matters what technology he employs: hammer, gun, knife, mace, sword. The technology is neither the problem nor the solution. The fundamental problem is the intent of the assailant. Unless we radically change our intent on this planet, “unlimited” energy—by any technological means—only accelerates our demise. I…

As they say, great power comes with great responsibility. Fortunately, we already have systems of mandatory education in place. Just add Responsible Energy Use 101 to the curriculum.

Why are there so many fatalities on our roads or from interpersonal violence? Did these people not attend the mandatory education about not killing people?

Re: Making energy too cheap to meter

#32

Post by picsao »

mr_mitm wrote: post #4
tuatoru wrote: post #2

> The way to address the real problems behind ergophobia is, counterintuitively, more energy. With enough cheap energy, we could literally pull excess carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and bury it again. With cheap energy, we could literally pull excess carbon dioxide, water and nitrogen out of the air and make fats, carbohydrates and amino acids. No need for agricultural land.

But then it will end up in the atmosphere again shortly after. I think the idea is to achieve a reduction in CO2. However, is there a process that sucks out CO2 more effectively than trees doing photosynthesis?

No post body was provided.

Re: Making energy too cheap to meter

#33

Post by philwelch »

charlieyu1 wrote: post #30
csense wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My personal inclination makes me a natural devil's advocate and skeptic of political movements across the spectrum. To me, the average supporter of the green agenda sounds like this: We Americans / Europeans are sinful and wasteful with our conspicuous energy consumption, air conditioning and air travel. The only path to redemption is to see the light and worship the planet. Importantly, this means we must practice a…

I have to say I don't understand why energy is so expensive in Europe, and I feel it is down to politics. In UK it cost like 5 times that of Hong Kong, and with standing charges on top of that.

A major source of energy in Europe was natural gas from Russia. This is no longer available due to the war in Ukraine, causing a continent-wide shortfall even for countries that didn’t depend on it as much because now they need to share their energy.

Re: Making energy too cheap to meter

#34

Post by philwelch »

carapace wrote: post #20

How do you handle the heat? At the rate we're going the surface of the Earth would glow like a light bulb in a handful of centuries. > we’re too close to an astounding point for me to leave it unspoken. At that 2.3% growth rate, we would be using energy at a rate corresponding to the total solar input striking Earth in a little over 400 years. We would consume something comparable to the entire sun in 1400 years from…

Human civilization doesn’t need to stay earthbound, especially not on that timescale.

Re: Making energy too cheap to meter

#36

Post by ZeroGravitas »

I don't really understand what they are saying?

Why does efficiency work against having more energy or more stuff?

I'm sure there were a thousand efficiency improvements needed to make the aluminium foil that is mentioned, we didn't just plug a lump of bauxite into the mains and scream "more power!" like a mad scientist in a horror film.

Re: Making energy too cheap to meter

#37

Post by prepend »

skybrian wrote: post #17

> I like an analogy I heard recently […] If a man is coming at you with the intent to do you harm, it hardly matters what technology he employs: hammer, gun, knife, mace, sword. The technology is neither the problem nor the solution. The fundamental problem is the intent of the assailant. Unless we radically change our intent on this planet, “unlimited” energy—by any technological means—only accelerates our demise. I…

This is interesting as free/cheap and abundant doesn’t mean unlimited. I think we’d have to work out systems where no one has to pay for an electricity bill and we have replicators but we don’t have enough energy to replicate a barrel of chlorine gas.

Re: Making energy too cheap to meter

#38

Post by LatteLazy »

skybrian wrote: post #17

> I like an analogy I heard recently […] If a man is coming at you with the intent to do you harm, it hardly matters what technology he employs: hammer, gun, knife, mace, sword. The technology is neither the problem nor the solution. The fundamental problem is the intent of the assailant. Unless we radically change our intent on this planet, “unlimited” energy—by any technological means—only accelerates our demise. I…

Of course, if the person with intent to do you harm is motivated by a dispute over energy then making energy much more available would change his intent. For instance, who will fight oil wars if the price of oil is 10x cheaper? Who will fund global terrorism if Saudi Arabia has to build an actual economy? Who will kill their neighbour to steal bread when the price of bread is much lower because cheap energy means cheap fertiliser, cheap irrigation, cheap transportation etc and the price of bread is suddenly very affordable?

On the other hand, we could ignore energy and just hope for a sudden unexpected change in human nature and economics?

Re: Making energy too cheap to meter

#39

Post by omega3 »

neltnerb wrote: post #7

Summary: If energy is free and doesn't impact anything then of course you would want to use more of it. I don't know why they think this is a unique perspective, I guess just pointing out that people don't discriminate by electricity source when they condemn extra energy use beyond what is needed to do a job. If the electricity source is free and does no harm there is no obvious way to label the electrons. I don't un…

> Summary: If energy is free and doesn't impact anything then of course you would want to use more of it.

I'm not convinced if this is always the case. I'm sure this is already a topic of interest in psychology but I guess that unless there is a reward for using the energy there wouldn't be consumption on the individual level.

As I'm writing this my CPU is at 2% and GPU at 1% utilization. I'm not actively looking for ways to utilize this even though it's (for the sake of argument) free.

Re: Making energy too cheap to meter

#40

Post by carapace »

philwelch wrote: post #34
carapace wrote: post #20

How do you handle the heat? At the rate we're going the surface of the Earth would glow like a light bulb in a handful of centuries. > we’re too close to an astounding point for me to leave it unspoken. At that 2.3% growth rate, we would be using energy at a rate corresponding to the total solar input striking Earth in a little over 400 years. We would consume something comparable to the entire sun in 1400 years from…

Human civilization doesn’t need to stay earthbound, especially not on that timescale.

Sure (and I'm into that) but it won't help, it just delays things a few more centuries. Even if we postulate a magic FTL space drive the crunch still comes.
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