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“Energy in the Future”: a time capsule of energy concerns from 1953

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Re: “Energy in the Future”: a time capsule of energy concerns from 1953

#41

Post by Lammy »

burlesona wrote: post #16

This strikes me as a very defeatist and Malthusian take on the world, and, frankly, too US-centric. While the US hasn’t managed the political will for significant climate reform, we are far from the majority of the world, and even if we magically had a green revolution and became the worlds first zero-emission nation, it’s unlikely that this would be enough to avert climate change. The developing world wants modern l…

> frankly, too US-centric

Try buying petroleum from OPEC in anything but USD: https://www.opec.org/opec_web/en/data_graphs/40.htm

Corollary: http://www.cnn.com/2000/WORLD/meast/10/30/iraq.un.euro.reut/

Re: “Energy in the Future”: a time capsule of energy concerns from 1953

#42

Post by jdblair »

XorNot wrote: post #40
jdblair wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arggh... I made a typo. It is 22.6 megawatt hours per capita per year, so an order of magnitude higher.

~60 kwH per day...that's actually pretty much inline with a normal household (also about the average of what my rooftop solar achieves).

But this number is per capita energy use across the whole society, including manufacturing and transportation. Not just household use. France only reached this level in the 1960s, Japan in the 1970s. China reached this level in 2012.

Re: “Energy in the Future”: a time capsule of energy concerns from 1953

#43

Post by chrisco255 »

Lammy wrote: post #41
burlesona wrote: post #16

This strikes me as a very defeatist and Malthusian take on the world, and, frankly, too US-centric. While the US hasn’t managed the political will for significant climate reform, we are far from the majority of the world, and even if we magically had a green revolution and became the worlds first zero-emission nation, it’s unlikely that this would be enough to avert climate change. The developing world wants modern l…

> frankly, too US-centric Try buying petroleum from OPEC in anything but USD: https://www.opec.org/opec_web/en/data_graphs/40.htm Corollary: http://www.cnn.com/2000/WORLD/meast/10/30/iraq.un.euro.reut/

USD is the world reserve currency. Most international trading occurs in terms of dollars.

Re: “Energy in the Future”: a time capsule of energy concerns from 1953

#44

Post by ncmncm »

_acco wrote: post #30
actinium226 wrote: post #24

Well hello Mr. Malthus! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Robert_Malthus Back to seriousness - the author claims there are limits to nuclear, wind, and solar, but does not state what those limits are. The limit on nuclear is not clear to me - France gets something like 75% of its energy from nuclear. It seems the main limit on nuclear has been public sentiment, which must be weighed with public sentiment on climat…

Interesting, right? If we believe the Titanic is sinking, why are we being picky about the lifeboat? Anything beyond averting disaster is an over-optimization.

We just closed Diablo Canyon and Indian Point nukes, not a moment too soon. Money wasted propping up those ramshackle contraptions can now go into solar and wind construction, at a better marginal return on new construction than we got just operating them. But they will unfortunately drain another billion dollars just being decommissioned.

Re: “Energy in the Future”: a time capsule of energy concerns from 1953

#45

Post by adrianN »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #33
actinium226 wrote: post #24

Well hello Mr. Malthus! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Robert_Malthus Back to seriousness - the author claims there are limits to nuclear, wind, and solar, but does not state what those limits are. The limit on nuclear is not clear to me - France gets something like 75% of its energy from nuclear. It seems the main limit on nuclear has been public sentiment, which must be weighed with public sentiment on climat…

Back in the 50s, nuclear was being treated as the magic that would solve all energy problems. There were ideas for making fission cars, trains, planes, etc. But since then, civilization has only benefited from nuclear reactors via power plants, naval ships, RTGs, and depending on how you see it, bombs. The magic of nuclear fission never provided the complete revolution it was setup to do. Just as we weren't responsib…

Fusion is not magic at all. It will most likely be a fairly expensive source of power. You might not need to spend a lot on fuel, but building large, technically very advanced installations is expensive.

Re: “Energy in the Future”: a time capsule of energy concerns from 1953

#46

Post by adrianN »

jdblair wrote: post #9

If you're interested in learning more about the big picture connection between our human society and energy, I recommend "Energy and Civilization: A History," by Vaclav Smil. My biggest takeaway from his book is that transitioning a society to affluence requires, at minimum, 22.6 megawatt hours of energy per capita per year. High energy societies like the United States use far more. To de-carbonize, we have to plan n…

I would really doubt power estimates with three significant digits when I could reduce my total power demand by at least 30% by switching to a heat pump for heating instead of burning oil without changing my quality of life in the slightest.

Re: “Energy in the Future”: a time capsule of energy concerns from 1953

#47

Post by aeternum »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #33
actinium226 wrote: post #24

Well hello Mr. Malthus! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Robert_Malthus Back to seriousness - the author claims there are limits to nuclear, wind, and solar, but does not state what those limits are. The limit on nuclear is not clear to me - France gets something like 75% of its energy from nuclear. It seems the main limit on nuclear has been public sentiment, which must be weighed with public sentiment on climat…

Back in the 50s, nuclear was being treated as the magic that would solve all energy problems. There were ideas for making fission cars, trains, planes, etc. But since then, civilization has only benefited from nuclear reactors via power plants, naval ships, RTGs, and depending on how you see it, bombs. The magic of nuclear fission never provided the complete revolution it was setup to do. Just as we weren't responsib…

The problem with nuclear is the slow iteration speed and extreme cost of failure.

Those are not good properties if you want to push technology forward quickly. The great thing about solar and wind is that we can iterate very quickly and catastrophic failure costs are nearly non-existent.

Nuclear still has great potential but the costs are just too high (and maybe they should be).

Re: “Energy in the Future”: a time capsule of energy concerns from 1953

#48

Post by m463 »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #33
actinium226 wrote: post #24

Well hello Mr. Malthus! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Robert_Malthus Back to seriousness - the author claims there are limits to nuclear, wind, and solar, but does not state what those limits are. The limit on nuclear is not clear to me - France gets something like 75% of its energy from nuclear. It seems the main limit on nuclear has been public sentiment, which must be weighed with public sentiment on climat…

Back in the 50s, nuclear was being treated as the magic that would solve all energy problems. There were ideas for making fission cars, trains, planes, etc. But since then, civilization has only benefited from nuclear reactors via power plants, naval ships, RTGs, and depending on how you see it, bombs. The magic of nuclear fission never provided the complete revolution it was setup to do. Just as we weren't responsib…

"It is not too much to expect that our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter, will know of great periodic regional famines in the world only as matters of history, will travel effortlessly over the seas and under them and through the air with a minimum of danger and at great speeds, and will experience a lifespan far longer than ours, as disease yields and man comes to understand what causes him to age." - Lewis Strauss, chairman of the United States Atomic Energy Commission 1954

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Too_cheap_to_meter

Re: “Energy in the Future”: a time capsule of energy concerns from 1953

#49

Post by bordercases »

XorNot wrote: post #39
dredmorbius wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The limits to various forms of energy are well-known. It's a bit more than I can describe in an HN comment, though Tom "Do the Math" Murphy has a good guide, index to his posts here: https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/post-index/ Heinberg himself has written of them in earlier books and articles. Essentially humans have access to the fluxes of solar, geothermal, and tidal energy, and the stores of fossil fuels, nuclear fissi…

> economic growth (and its concommittant and requisite resource and energy growth) simply cannot continue indefinitely. Economic growth occurs in any situation where you increase productivity. But this means you can increase productivity in anyway, including by efficiency improvements. Economic growth can't be sustained at the same rate it has been, but it can be sustained because while 100% efficiency is an asymptot…

This is too abstract. Goods aren't one dimensional in value so 100% efficiency isn't always sensical or desirable. Think of massive food waste and the option to only eat as much as you please for almost whatever you want. Eliminating all food waste would mean reducing the ability to explore different tastes, hypermonitoring your calorie consumption and appetites, and in all likelihood moving to a liquid diet globally so we can increment food doses just in time. Food tastes are so diverse and the supply chain so risk laden that under our current consumption demands some waste is inevitable.

Re: “Energy in the Future”: a time capsule of energy concerns from 1953

#50

Post by labster »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #29
dcolkitt wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My sincere guess is that we'll kludge the problem with relatively low-tech geoengineering solutions. Primarily stratospheric aerosol injections. The technology is very well understood and fully mature. We know with certainty, from historical volcano eruptions, that a large enough dosage will lower global temperatures near instantly. And the cost is low enough that even a single mid-size economy could afford to unilat…

I’ve seen enough sci fi movies and watched human behavior long enough that the aerosol idea terrifies me. I can see that going so wrong and plunging us into an ice age that we didn’t predict or many other scenarios because we didn’t understand everything as well as we thought we did. Let’s hope that is the absolute last resort. And I’m not anti science. I’m a former scientist and almost all my experiments usually end…

Atmospheric scientist here, currently non-practicing. You’re making the same mistake that climate denialists make, but in reverse. We actually know a great deal about climate feedback mechanisms now. We know the residence time of SO2 in the upper atmosphere. We know how to calculate the change in solar flux as a result. We can model what will happen — we know this because our past climate models did well with the uncontrolled experiment we're already running. Simply because the Earth system is complex doesn’t mean we don’t understand it enough to foresee catastrophic failure.

And if we overshoot cooling, we know how to fix it. Just pump methane into the atmosphere. Stuff lasts a few decades before breaking into ozone and CO2 (via NOx). We already know how that turns out because we’re doing it now.

Lack of perfect knowledge about the Earth-atmosphere system is not an excuse for inaction. The grand experiment was already begun in the 1800s, and it’s too late to call it off now. We must take both decarbonization and geoengineering strategies if we want to escape the worst of this.

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