111–120 of 466 posts
Self-sustaining robot factories would give us the means of almost unlimited labor that we could task with building out all the infrastructure we'd need to lift humanity away from the reaches of nature's tyranny.
Interesting to see the comment thread digging into all sorts of criticism of the article (is it 2 kWh / fridge? Or 1.1? Should the author discuss renewable earlier or more seriously?) The main point I got from the article was a helpful reminder that a large part of the world doesn't have basic things that I take for granted (not just refrigeration, but you might also include air conditioning, transportation, etc). An…
> Interesting to see the comment thread digging into all sorts of criticism of the article (is it 2 kWh / fridge? Or 1.1? Should the author discuss renewable?) Hear hear. The point is, for those of us living in developed countries, is that all wealth is energy wealth. The western way of life is totally dependent on an abundance of cheap energy. When energy runs out, or becomes significantly more expensive, it's game…
Eastern too
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/World_fo...
Interesting to see the comment thread digging into all sorts of criticism of the article (is it 2 kWh / fridge? Or 1.1? Should the author discuss renewable earlier or more seriously?) The main point I got from the article was a helpful reminder that a large part of the world doesn't have basic things that I take for granted (not just refrigeration, but you might also include air conditioning, transportation, etc). An…
One thing I’ve learned over time is that it’s just really, really difficult for most people (including me!) to reason about things that they haven’t directly experienced. Even harder to have empathy. So it’s very hard to engage with an argument or discussion that’s about the world as a whole, because all of us have such difficulty properly weighting and evaluating the things we have no experience with (which by defin…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the Alpha Centauri game setting, energy is literally money ("energy credits").
And that's what PoW crypto currencies are: sacrificed energy.
Indeed, sooo much energy is utterly wasted; but there's no getting through to the followers. You can scream and roar, wheedle and persuade, but they won't give up the idea that their sacrifices are necessary for the cosmic wheel to keep turning.
BTC (and other PoW) maxis are the priest class; bag holders are the wealthy funders getting the temples built. Missionaries get rewarded for bringing new acolytes into the fold.
Will the brutal religion survive? Or will it fall to a New Testament upstart?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We're not deploying new renewables "pretty much as fast as we can". We're not even close to doing that. In actuality, we have ludicrously-rich power centers which are actively subsidizing fossil fuels and warring against renewables. Imagine if all that effort were redirected.
> Imagine if all that effort were redirected. Well, we'd get there faster, of course. But that's still not right now, that would be still many years, especially for the third world which can't afford the investment.
If every home was insulated and had a heat pump, we'd all be richer.
Why havent we done that?
Why, when the initial Ukraine invasion in 2014 caused a gas price spike, did Bjorn Lomborg and other climate change deniers write an article very much like this one, in which he advocated against more renewables, and instead said we needed to invest in research to find the real solution.
So here we are again, 8 years later, and we're doing the exact same thing? Fool me once...
Carrying capacity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrying_capacity
> The carrying capacity of an environment is the maximum population size of a biological species that can be sustained by that specific environment, given the food, habitat, water, and other resources available. The carrying capacity is defined as the environment's maximal load, which in population ecology corresponds to the population equilibrium, when the number of deaths in a population equals the number of births (as well as immigration and emigration). The effect of carrying capacity on population dynamics is modelled with a logistic function. Carrying capacity is applied to the maximum population an environment can support in ecology, agriculture and fisheries. The term carrying capacity has been applied to a few different processes in the past before finally being applied to population limits in the 1950s.[1] The notion of carrying capacity for humans is covered by the notion of sustainable population.
Sustainable population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_population :
> Talk of economic and population growth leading to the limits of Earth's carrying capacity for humans are popular in environmentalism.[16] The potential limiting factor for the human population might include water availability, energy availability, renewable resources, non-renewable resources, heat removal, photosynthetic capacity, and land availability for food production.[17] The applicability of carrying capacity as a measurement of the Earth's limits in terms of the human population has not been very useful, as the Verhulst equation does not allow an unequivocal calculation and prediction of the upper limits of population growth.[16]
> [...] The application of the concept of carrying capacity for the human population, which exists in a non-equilibrium, is criticized for not successfully being able to model the processes between humans and the environment.[16][20] In popular discourse the concept has largely left the domain of academic consideration, and is simply used vaguely in the sense of a "balance between nature and human populations".[20]
Practically, if you can find something sustainable to do with brine (NaCL; Sodium Chloride and), and we manage to achieve cheap clean energy, and we can automate humanoid labor, desalinating water and pumping it inland is feasible; so, global water prices shouldn't then be the limit to our carrying capacity. #Goal6 #CleanWater
Water trading > Alternatives to water trading markets (*) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_trading
LCOE: Levelized Cost of Electricity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_electricity
LCOW: Levelized Cost of Water: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_water
TIL about modern methods for drilling water wells on youtube: with a hand drill, with a drive cap and a sledgehammer and a pitcher-pump after a T with valves for an optional (loud) electric pump, or a solar electric water pump
Drinking water > Water Quality: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_water#Water_quality :
> Nearly 4.2 billion people worldwide had access to tap water, while another 2.4 billion had access to wells or public taps.[3] The World Health Organization considers access to safe drinking-water a basic human right.
> About 1 to 2 billion people lack safe drinking water.[4] Water can carry vectors of disease. More people die from unsafe water than from war, then-U.N. secretary-general Ban Ki-moon said in 2010.[5] Third world countries are most affected by lack of water, flooding, and water quality. Up to 80 percent of illnesses in developing countries are the direct result of inadequate water and sanitation. [6]
A helpful risk hierarchy chart: "The risk hierarchy for water sources used in private drinking water supplies": From Lowest Risk to Highest Risk: Mains water, Rainwater, Deep groundwater, Shallow groundwater, Surface water
TIL it's possible to filter Rainwater with an unglazed terracotta pot and no electricity, too
Also, TIL about solid-state heat engines ("thermionic converters") with no moving parts, that only need a thermal gradient in order to generate electricity. The difference between #VantaBlack and #VantaWhite in the sun results in a thermal gradient, for example
Is a second loop and a heat exchange even necessary if solid-state heat engines are more efficient than gas turbines?
Any exothermic reaction?! FWIU, we only need 100°C to quickly purify water.
Interesting to see the comment thread digging into all sorts of criticism of the article (is it 2 kWh / fridge? Or 1.1? Should the author discuss renewable earlier or more seriously?) The main point I got from the article was a helpful reminder that a large part of the world doesn't have basic things that I take for granted (not just refrigeration, but you might also include air conditioning, transportation, etc). An…
> Interesting to see the comment thread digging into all sorts of criticism of the article (is it 2 kWh / fridge? Or 1.1? Should the author discuss renewable?) Hear hear. The point is, for those of us living in developed countries, is that all wealth is energy wealth. The western way of life is totally dependent on an abundance of cheap energy. When energy runs out, or becomes significantly more expensive, it's game…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We do have the energy. The US spends enough energy on transportation that the entire world could have refrigeration. The US spends 28% of total energy consumption on transportation. 93.33 Quadrillion BTUs x .28 / 3142 (BTUs per kWh) / 365 (days per year) = 22.8B kWh per day. BEV vehicles are 5x more efficient than ICE vehicles. We could have the same standard of living and just not use gas-powered vehicles and save ~…
> BEV vehicles are 5x more efficient than ICE vehicles. I've seen this figure before. It ignores the efficiency of the generation of electric power to charge the EV. A much more realistic figure is 2x.
You can play this game all day long, depending on which figure you want to land on. Efficiency is nice but the reason it hasn't mattered at all is that it is more about what is readily available and cheaply exploited.
All poverty is institutional and societal poverty. People are poor not because of lack of energy, but because the societies they live in lack the inclusive institutions that can create those patterns for energy use, education, healthcare and anything else. When you put those institutions in place, the effect manifests itself as economic growth, energy use, increased education etc., which in turn strengthen those poli…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The author is saying we should do all those things, that they need done, that the total amount of energy humanity uses should grow not shrink Well...yea. It's unbelievably naive how some believe humanity should somehow start using _less_ energy. If they actually got their way, we would see a recession/depression that would be the most painful of our lifetime. We should be focused on raising the standard of living f…
As it stands, we do not have the ability to both raise living standards and solve climate change. We just are using too many resources for it to be sustainable. Having all of India's population reaching a European level of CO2 expenditure (about 4 tons / person / year) kills us. And renewables would only account for a very small reduction of that.
This is defeatist bullshit.
No one is arguing that the whole world needs to immediately live exactly like the richest citizens.
Your attitude really disappoints and actually enrages me. Luckily, I can take comfort in knowing how counter to human nature it is. Humans will not accept a declining standard of living because a few people want to virtue signal. Try to force it on them at your own peril.
