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Solving climate change by abusing thermodynamic scaling laws

ckrapu.github.io

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Re: Solving climate change by abusing thermodynamic scaling laws

#171

Post by codethief »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #142
codethief wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> e.g. if you find your data centers are using too much power, put them in space. …put them in space how far away from Earth exactly? If they're too close, the heat they radiate away will end up on Earth again. If they're too far away, latency & maintenance will become an issue.

> If they're too close, the heat they radiate away will end up on Earth again. So put a mirror on the Earth side of it? > If they're too far away, latency & maintenance will become an issue. There are many compute tasks where latency is irrelevant. To take a recent example, AI model training. It does not matter if the compute farm is a few light minutes away when the computation itself is going to take days to months…

> Maintenance is performed locally. […] By the time this becomes relevant to planetary energy there are multiple space stations with permanent staff.

It seems whether or not you can keep maintenance staff close-by would depend on the temperatures of those server farms. Yes, the regime in which this could work might be fairly large but remember that we're talking about exponential growth of energy production here and the whole reason behind moving the power plants (and server farms) to deep space was that they were emitting enough heat to affect planet-level thermodynamics.

Re: Solving climate change by abusing thermodynamic scaling laws

#172

Post by Self-Perfection »

arresin wrote: post #157
Self-Perfection wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only thing we need to implement from your list is the carbon tax. But it has to be sufficiently high. The rest will happen without extra nudging just because doing it "the wrong way" will be too expensive. By feeding carbon tax money into carbon extraction we can eventually start reducing amount of carbon in atmosphere.

Imagine the money collected being awarded on a per tonne basis for each tonne of carbon you can extract and reliably sequester.

Yes, this is a one of the steps of the way how it should work from my point of view.

What is your point?

Re: Solving climate change by abusing thermodynamic scaling laws

#173

Post by Self-Perfection »

adrianN wrote: post #144
Self-Perfection wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only thing we need to implement from your list is the carbon tax. But it has to be sufficiently high. The rest will happen without extra nudging just because doing it "the wrong way" will be too expensive. By feeding carbon tax money into carbon extraction we can eventually start reducing amount of carbon in atmosphere.

It’s probably too late for a tax-only solution. Either the tax is too low to have the necessary effect, or people will overthrow the government who instated it. The change we need has become quite drastic.

Of course sudden imposing of sufficiently high tax will cause massive shockwaves going through markets and people's lifes.

Therefore tax should be increased gradually, year by year, spread out for ~10 years.

Re: Solving climate change by abusing thermodynamic scaling laws

#174

Post by adrianN »

Self-Perfection wrote: post #173
adrianN wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s probably too late for a tax-only solution. Either the tax is too low to have the necessary effect, or people will overthrow the government who instated it. The change we need has become quite drastic.

Of course sudden imposing of sufficiently high tax will cause massive shockwaves going through markets and people's lifes. Therefore tax should be increased gradually, year by year, spread out for ~10 years.

That would have been a great strategy about thirty years ago. Now we can’t really afford a measure that only really starts working a couple of years in the future. We already know pretty well what needs to be done, we don’t need the market to figure it out for us.

Re: Solving climate change by abusing thermodynamic scaling laws

#175

Post by AnthonyMouse »

codethief wrote: post #171
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they're too close, the heat they radiate away will end up on Earth again. So put a mirror on the Earth side of it? > If they're too far away, latency & maintenance will become an issue. There are many compute tasks where latency is irrelevant. To take a recent example, AI model training. It does not matter if the compute farm is a few light minutes away when the computation itself is going to take days to months…

> Maintenance is performed locally. […] By the time this becomes relevant to planetary energy there are multiple space stations with permanent staff. It seems whether or not you can keep maintenance staff close-by would depend on the temperatures of those server farms. Yes, the regime in which this could work might be fairly large but remember that we're talking about exponential growth of energy production here and…

But that still doesn't affect energy density. If you want twice as many server farms then you build twice as many space stations in twice the volume of space and the energy density remains constant.

Re: Solving climate change by abusing thermodynamic scaling laws

#176

Post by thesnide »

adrianN wrote: post #174
Self-Perfection wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course sudden imposing of sufficiently high tax will cause massive shockwaves going through markets and people's lifes. Therefore tax should be increased gradually, year by year, spread out for ~10 years.

That would have been a great strategy about thirty years ago. Now we can’t really afford a measure that only really starts working a couple of years in the future. We already know pretty well what needs to be done, we don’t need the market to figure it out for us.

The best moment to starting it was 30 years ago. The next best moment is now.

Don't cry over spilled milk. It is spilled. But don't throw the rest just because the glass is now half empty.

As otherwise, in 30 years, we'll be in the same exact spot.

Best is the enemy of good.

Re: Solving climate change by abusing thermodynamic scaling laws

#177

Post by codethief »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #175
codethief wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maintenance is performed locally. […] By the time this becomes relevant to planetary energy there are multiple space stations with permanent staff. It seems whether or not you can keep maintenance staff close-by would depend on the temperatures of those server farms. Yes, the regime in which this could work might be fairly large but remember that we're talking about exponential growth of energy production here and…

But that still doesn't affect energy density . If you want twice as many server farms then you build twice as many space stations in twice the volume of space and the energy density remains constant.

> But that still doesn't affect energy density.

But it does? I think you're confusing energy density with power density. The former is an integral over time and would be monotically increasing with time since nuclear fusion would allow us to basically pull energy out of of thin (ok, maybe not so thin) air.

Re: Solving climate change by abusing thermodynamic scaling laws

#178

Post by adrianN »

thesnide wrote: post #176
adrianN wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would have been a great strategy about thirty years ago. Now we can’t really afford a measure that only really starts working a couple of years in the future. We already know pretty well what needs to be done, we don’t need the market to figure it out for us.

The best moment to starting it was 30 years ago. The next best moment is now. Don't cry over spilled milk. It is spilled. But don't throw the rest just because the glass is now half empty. As otherwise, in 30 years, we'll be in the same exact spot. Best is the enemy of good.

That's a false dichotomy as there are a ton of measures other than a tax that we can take (even in parallel to a tax).
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