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Tidal energy is not renewable

cs.stanford.edu

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Re: Tidal energy is not renewable

#81

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #34
JumpinJack_Cash wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That better be the case , we are already seeing that if the pie can't grow then we start fighting each other violently to enlarge one's piece of it.

Conflict over scarce resources is inevitable. When the violence starts, you should be prepared to win (from a nation state perspective). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37122796 | https://www.mdpi.com/2673-4060/4/3/32 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37313586 | https://medium.com/@samyoureyes/the-busy-workers-handbook-to... https://overshoot.footprintnetwork.org/newsroom/country-over... https://en.wikipedia.…

The future is hard to predict.

I'm willing to bet our descendants will be approximately as irrational and lucky as humans have always been.

There's a good chance that at least one of those ten billion are going to have some radically good ideas, and an even better chance than a few more will have some really good ideas.

Re: Tidal energy is not renewable

#82

Post by paulmd »

skywhopper wrote: post #17

This is a CS professor doing some naive math and assuming that the energy usage patterns of the past 50 years (an increase of 2% usage each year on average) could or would keep going for the next 1000 years.

Despite all the scoffing in this thread, they’ve gone on at about that rate for 200+ years now.

Expecting a deviation from this is kinda “climate change will slow down in the 2000s and 2010s from green energy” level magical thinking.

Re: Tidal energy is not renewable

#83

Post by happymellon »

popol12 wrote: post #65
coldcode wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More countries are now sub-2.0 replacement, China is down to 1.09 so the peak is unlikely to get much more than that.

A Google search for “china children per woman” gives me 1.705 Are you talking about something else ?

Normally it requires two people to make a baby. So 1.7 is less than the number of people requires to create it.

Rates are normally calculated by couples. 0.85 per person is a decline.

Re: Tidal energy is not renewable

#84

Post by hef19898 »

bbor wrote: post #74
adventured wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which is more likely? Everyone lives like a European (from a consumption perspective)? Or a bunch of people don’t or die while some do? There are no systems that can ever be created to actually balance out / eliminate inequality, outside of very small communities operated via extreme authoritarianism. See: modern Sweden. A formerly highly effective welfare state, increasingly brought to its knees by poor immigrants…

You have some sources for “Sweden and France are failed countries”? Something tells me that’s not quite an objective take. “Inequality exists now so it will always” is also not the objective scientific take I think you’re implying it to be

At least those people moved on from raping refugees at German christmas markets and new year's eve celebrations. At least it some kind of progress...

Re: Tidal energy is not renewable

#85

Post by Onavo »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #63
wcoenen wrote: post #27

I'm not sure the author realized this, but they're actually making a statement about how crazy exponential growth is. Not about the sustainability of tidal power. This becomes obvious once you look closer at what that 2% growth rate (as assumed in the post) implies. Our global energy consumption in 2008 was estimated to be 474 exajoules. The total energy received by the earth from the sun during a year is about 5 mil…

Any sort of straight line extrapolation is useless. Look at the US energy consumed per capita, flat or declining for the last 50 years. Other parts of the world will follow as they develop. Likely the same for population growth. http://insideenergy.org/wp-content/uploads//2017/01/historic... from: https://insideenergy.org/2017/01/12/energy-explained/

It flattened in the midst of manufacturing outsourcing and globalization. Bring back the heavy industries and it would look much more different.

Re: Tidal energy is not renewable

#86

Post by MichaelDickens »

crazygringo wrote: post #58

Tons of comments here highlighting that 2% annual growth rate in energy consumption is ludicrous. But so what if we made a more reasonable assumption that annual energy usage will stabilize at, say, 5X of what it is currently, and the (unreasonable) assumption that we get 100% of that energy from tides. Then how much of a rotational slowdown do we get after 1000 years?

According to the paper, tidal energy has a total capacity of 10^29 Joules, and current global energy consumption is 10^21 Joules per year, so if we converted 100% of current energy consumption to tidal energy and didn't increase it at all, it would last 10^8 = 100 million years (rounded to the nearest power of 10).

Equivalently, after 1000 years, we'd see a rotational slowdown of around 0.001%.

Re: Tidal energy is not renewable

#88

Post by JumpinJack_Cash »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #80
bbor wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jesus fucking Christ this is depressing. You just brought up how you think genocide inevitable, and you imply that we should start it so that we’ll win? I don’t think there’s any reason we should take “let’s kill everyone else so we can keep our nice stuff” should make any more sense in 2023 than it has over the last… well, such arguments pop up in all of human history, I guess. To answer your question: i think it’s…

I didn’t say genocide, I said violence over scarce resources. They are distinct motivators. I also didn’t say to start it, I said to win. > To answer your question: i think it’s more likely that we build an egalitarian global society, or at least continue on the path. Good luck with that. Hope is not a strategy, but hopefully the future is not as bleak as the current data predicts. Show me a voter cohort that will wi…

> > Good luck with that. Hope is not a strategy, but hopefully the future is not as bleak as the current data predicts. Show me a voter cohort that will willingly give up substantial go forward quality of life for people on the other side of the world who they have not nor will never meet.

Voters might never do it, but the guy who wins the Presidency and only has to face voters every 4 years, he starts thinking about Nobel Peace Prize the moment he sets foot in the WH, and to make a legitimate candidacy he needs to be a great humanitarian and/or getting some significant Foreign Policy victories.

Bush 43 took it upon himself to fund a whole lot of malaria and HIV prevention campaigns, and even Trump pursued the defeat of ISIS and normalization of relationships between Israel and the Arab world.

Re: Tidal energy is not renewable

#89

Post by mNovak »

Nition wrote: post #78
wcoenen wrote: post #27

I'm not sure the author realized this, but they're actually making a statement about how crazy exponential growth is. Not about the sustainability of tidal power. This becomes obvious once you look closer at what that 2% growth rate (as assumed in the post) implies. Our global energy consumption in 2008 was estimated to be 474 exajoules. The total energy received by the earth from the sun during a year is about 5 mil…

Humanity needing that amount of energy seems obviously absurd, but then I suppose a CPU with 100 billion transistors seemed clearly impossible in 1960. Maybe a few hundred years from now, Internet archaeologists will find your comment as one of the first harbingers of the coming World Energy Crisis, much as we see the 1912 Rodney & Otamatea Times "Coal Consumption Affecting Climate" snippet today.[0] Then they'll fin…

A direct link to the mentioned snippet:

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/ROTWKG19120814....

Re: Tidal energy is not renewable

#90

Post by giantrobot »

eldaisfish wrote: post #79
WillPostForFood wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any sort of straight line extrapolation is useless. Look at the US energy consumed per capita, flat or declining for the last 50 years. Other parts of the world will follow as they develop. Likely the same for population growth. http://insideenergy.org/wp-content/uploads//2017/01/historic... from: https://insideenergy.org/2017/01/12/energy-explained/

the rest of the world still has to catch up to these levels. Granted, they won't get to the absurd wastage levels of north america but they will continue to consume more energy. Just looking at the energy levels in one country doesn't tell you much.

Developing countries will increase their energy usage but have the benefit of buying things from developed countries. As we've seen developing countries today have been able to jump right to modern technology for infrastructure.

They didn't need to build massive lines of analog telecommunications, they just jumped right to cellular and satellite technology. They can jump right to solar and other renewables as they electrify. They can skip incandescent lighting and go right to LEDs.

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