91–100 of 350 posts
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…
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…
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…
The world population is predicted to peak about 30% above where it is now and then fall back -- maybe to 7 billion people sustained. We seem to need about 200 GJ per person to be really happy [1], so let's assume 300 GJ per person.
We should be able to get by, happily, on 2000 EJ per year sustained. By your figures, that's less than 1% of what the sun provides.
[1] https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ecs2...
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…
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…
> Our global energy consumption in 2008 was estimated to be 474 exajoules. If my maths is right, that's about 40,000 kcal per person per day, or about 15 times the energy consumption of an average adult. I'm trying to figure out if that's a lot or not. On the one hand, not: this ratio is not strictly bounded in any way, and the human energy consumption is an arbitrary denominator. Still, a very rough interpretation i…
As someone with a physics background... well... it's within an order of magnitude or two, so that sounds close enough to be probably accurate.
Solar energy is not renewable too in the long run (very long run).
That's not what renewable means. Renewable energy means that the source is naturally replenished within a human lifetime. In other words, the source isn't permanently depleted by tapping into it. This is the case with solar energy: the Sun's energy output doesn't change depending on whether we use it or not. Renewable doesn't mean perpetual - that'd be physically impossible for all we know.
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…
Human energy use isn't going to continue to grow exponentially for the next 500 years. The world population is predicted to peak about 30% above where it is now and then fall back -- maybe to 7 billion people sustained. We seem to need about 200 GJ per person to be really happy [1], so let's assume 300 GJ per person. We should be able to get by, happily, on 2000 EJ per year sustained. By your figures, that's less tha…
Eh, who am I to criticize? They say that your early grad school years are a time to publish large amounts of papers that you don't think are likely to stick. This is a little bit out there even by this standard though.
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…
It's been well known since at least The limits to growth[1], 51 years ago.
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…
If only collective intelligence could rise above it all we might be well on the way to enjoying the creation of a more efficient, less wasteful, and more worthwhile future. . . but that too mentally taxing to engage with. . .so it goes