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WTF Happened in 2023?

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Re: WTF Happened in 2023?

#11

Post by worik »

brobdingnagians wrote: post #4
spansoa wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> while the energy intensity to obtain it is decreasing. Correct. Infinite Growth being the north star here, but it's not sustainable indefinitely.

Expansion into space would help mitigate a lot of things, and the more population pressure, with the accompanying increase in labour, the more likely that expansion is to take place. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-12318767/NAS...

> Expansion into space would help mitigate a lot of things, and the more population pressure, with the accompanying increase in labour, the more likely that expansion is to take place.

How can expansion into space mitigate pressure on Earth in any meaningful way?

Re: WTF Happened in 2023?

#12

Post by palata »

brobdingnagians wrote: post #4
spansoa wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> while the energy intensity to obtain it is decreasing. Correct. Infinite Growth being the north star here, but it's not sustainable indefinitely.

Expansion into space would help mitigate a lot of things, and the more population pressure, with the accompanying increase in labour, the more likely that expansion is to take place. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-12318767/NAS...

Who wants to go live on Mars, really? Spoiler: you can't survive outdoor, there are no animals there, no trees, no flowers, it's basically a big desert.

Wanna go further? Proxima Centauri (the next star) is really, really far. Actually even a lot further than that. We definitely won't go there, unless we discover completely new physics (but it does not seem rational to count on that). So it's either Mars, or something that looks like Mars (I don't know, Venus maybe?), or living in a spaceship. Which is a bit like living on Mars, but worse.

Let's try to survive on Earth first, shall we? Because right now we (as a species) are failing. And not because of external factors: just because of us.

Re: WTF Happened in 2023?

#13

Post by worik »

1270018080 wrote: post #5

It's shameful to see the effect targeted media campaigns have on Republicans with the steep dropoff in support of wind/solar. But at least it's good to see nuclear gain ground on both sides.

> least it's good to see nuclear gain ground on both sides.

Where are you going to store the waste? 200,000 years?

Nuclear is making future generations pay for current consumption

Re: WTF Happened in 2023?

#14

Post by marssaxman »

boplicity wrote: post #9

Fossil Fuel extraction is still growing. In the future, I think they'll know exactly what happened in 2023. And it won't be thought of kindly.

I suspect they might not know quite so exactly, due to so many of the records having been lost, but it still won't be thought of kindly.

Re: WTF Happened in 2023?

#15

Post by palata »

ballenf wrote: post #8
palata wrote: post #7

What? I get that optimism feels nice, but... resources on Earth are limited, and we are starting to feel it (actually for conventional oil, the peak was in 2008, and Europe's economy has been feeling it since then). Extracting metals gets more and more expensive and harder. Renewables are extremely far from looking like they could remotely replace fossil fuels, and given that building nuclear plants takes decades, it…

Fissionable resources are plentiful and we've barely started to extract them.

Sure, because our whole society depends on fossil fuels. We are not looking like we are even starting to move away from them, so probably we will have finished screwing up the climate before we run out of fossil fuels. At which point it will be too late for building nuclear plants anyway.

Now say we realize that today (which is very not clear) and start building nuclear plants: still it is absolutely not clear that we can remotely compensate our addiction to fossil fuels. In other words, it may well be that we need more nuclear plants in order to control the forced degrowth that's coming.

> Fissionable resources are plentiful

Actually, and if I understood correctly, most nuclear plants today use uranium 235. Which is limited. New generations use uranium 238 (which is much less limited), but they still need some uranium 235. So even there we need to transition sooner than later. And given how much f** we give about moving away from fossil fuels in order to survive on Earth, I wouldn't bet that we give a lot about transitioning to newer gen nuclear plants.

Re: WTF Happened in 2023?

#16

Post by palata »

worik wrote: post #13
1270018080 wrote: post #5

It's shameful to see the effect targeted media campaigns have on Republicans with the steep dropoff in support of wind/solar. But at least it's good to see nuclear gain ground on both sides.

> least it's good to see nuclear gain ground on both sides. Where are you going to store the waste? 200,000 years? Nuclear is making future generations pay for current consumption

Waste is not so much of a problem. We can handle it.

Don't get me wrong. Nuclear waste is a problem. But it is much, much less of a problem than fossil fuels. As in: fossil fuels are currently killing us (so nuclear waste won't be a problem for many if we continue like this with fossil fuels), and nuclear waste is manageable.

We don't have the luxury of finding something truly "clean" (nope, renewables don't remotely have the potential of nuclear power, which won't remotely replace fossil fuels. And technically they are not truly clean either).

What is making future generations pay is fossil fuel. And it is extremely expensive.

Re: WTF Happened in 2023?

#17

Post by [deleted] »

worik wrote: post #11
brobdingnagians wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Expansion into space would help mitigate a lot of things, and the more population pressure, with the accompanying increase in labour, the more likely that expansion is to take place. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-12318767/NAS...

> Expansion into space would help mitigate a lot of things, and the more population pressure, with the accompanying increase in labour, the more likely that expansion is to take place. How can expansion into space mitigate pressure on Earth in any meaningful way?

[deleted]

Re: WTF Happened in 2023?

#18

Post by [deleted] »

retrac wrote: post #2

I've long thought any supposed economic/technological stagnation was illusory, or at least greatly overstated. The third industrial revolution began several decades ago and we're now in the middle of it. I like to stay grounded so I look at basic metrics. Pick almost any raw resource or simple good, and its extraction or production is through the roof, while the energy intensity to obtain it is decreasing. In fact mo…

[deleted]

Re: WTF Happened in 2023?

#19

Post by antisthenes »

brobdingnagians wrote: post #4
spansoa wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> while the energy intensity to obtain it is decreasing. Correct. Infinite Growth being the north star here, but it's not sustainable indefinitely.

Expansion into space would help mitigate a lot of things, and the more population pressure, with the accompanying increase in labour, the more likely that expansion is to take place. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-12318767/NAS...

Expanding into space consumes exponentially more energy than doing the same things on Earth.

It's basically just wishful thinking and hand-waving away physics until we actually crack fusion and more or less free near-infinite energy.

Until then, it's just a pipe dream by techno-optimists.

Re: WTF Happened in 2023?

#20

Post by shrimp_emoji »

worik wrote: post #13
1270018080 wrote: post #5

It's shameful to see the effect targeted media campaigns have on Republicans with the steep dropoff in support of wind/solar. But at least it's good to see nuclear gain ground on both sides.

> least it's good to see nuclear gain ground on both sides. Where are you going to store the waste? 200,000 years? Nuclear is making future generations pay for current consumption

The nuclear waste of old reactors is miniscule in volume. Pick somewhere, and you're good for ages. The nuclear waste of new reactors is even tinier in scale.

> Nuclear is making future generations pay for current consumption

Yes, a fraction of the payment of any alternative power sources (pollution and climate change for fossil fuels; lost productivity for wind/solar; lost forests for biomass).

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