The entire book falls apart because of two facts, both of which are in the book itself!
"Hands down, solar is the only renewable resource capable of matching our current societal energy demand. Not only can it reach 18 TW, it can exceed the mark by orders of magnitude." (Section 13.9)
"We would likely not be discussing a finite planet or limits to growth or climate change if only one million humans inhabited the planet, even living at United States standards. We would perceive no meaningful limit to natural resources and ecosystem services." (Section 3.5) An energy source that is thousands of times more abundant than fossil fuels is basically equivalent to having one one thousandth the population.
While I must acknowledge the truth that converting things to run on electricity will be a large engineering and logistical challenge, and that battery production must be scaled up (as well as converting some loads to run where the sun is shining), both of these challenges pale in comparison to the money part of that first quote: "exceed the mark by orders of magnitude." In other words, even if we could only store electricity at an efficiency of 1%, we'd be fine. (In actuality, we ALREADY store electricity at efficiencies over 80 times that.)
Ecosystem services, availability of raw materials, and many other challenges exist as well. However, all of them are meaningless in the face of "we would perceive no meaningful limit to natural resources." Having an energy source that is thousands to millions of times more abundant than the ones we use today lets us substitute energy for basically all of our needs. (Need clean water? Energy + dirty water = clean water. Need more steel? Dirt + energy = steel. Need to remove CO2 from the atmosphere? You can do it, at only the cost of several times the energy you got putting the CO2 into the atmosphere, which is only a few % of the future energy budget from solar. Think of it this way. In the past, we relied on cutting down forests for heat. Putting the forests back would have seemed like an insurmountable task, because our fuel came from the forests. But now that we run on fossil fuels, which are approximately 100x more abundant than forests, putting the forests back is a matter of politics and land usage discussions, not one of practicality.)
In other words, we are the only ones we have to blame if the future is not MUCH wealthier than the past, both per person and also for our total economy.
I'm not sure I understand your point. Perhaps you disagree with the author on the desirability of a future in which virtually unlimited energy is available to humankind in its current state (see the upshot on nuclear fusion p. 269, for example). His cautious take on our collective ability to manage our energetic needs[0] does not seem unwarranted to me.
Regardless, I think the book remains useful for its intended audiences as a quantitative assessment of available energy sources given our growth path.
[0] "The rookie mistake here is assuming that adults are in charge." (p. 134)
> "Fusion is therefore a complicated and not particularly cheap way to
generate electricity. Meanwhile, we are not running terribly short on
renewable ways to produce electricity: solar; wind; hydroelectric; geother-
mal; tidal."
Fusion is the key to long term success for humanity. It paves the way to essentially unlimited cheap burstable power.
In the even longer term plasma fusion offers a way to create the heavier elements that we are running out of here on earth. Forged in a manmade nuclear furnace.
These pesky climate problems can be solved. We just have to mine ideas out of nature now instead of minerals.
If you're trying to think about humanity's long term prospects fusion should be the crown jewel, not an after thought you handwave away. I believe today we spend somewhere on the order of 1% of what we should be spending on fusion research.
In the even longer term plasma fusion offers a way to create the heavier elements that we are running out of here on earth. Forged in a manmade nuclear furnace.
The only heavy element that we actually "use up" to any significant degree is uranium, which is consumed for energy, but if we had cheap fusion energy uranium consumption would plummet. Even if we could make artificial uranium it would be a net-energy-losing process to make artificial uranium with fusion power instead of using fusion power directly.
The thing is, it's not just climate that's the problem. The "pesky" problem is that we've crossed or are soon crossing most planetary boundaries[1] at the same time.
Fusion doesn't stop and reverse biodiversity loss, chemical pollutants, land-system change, biochemical flows, ocean plastic buildup and ocean acidification.
To stop the ecological collapse, the necessary condition is that the global North drastically reduces material flows and energy consumption. With less energy use, fusion also becomes less critical.
"Salvaging a decent future requires keen awareness, quantitative assessment, deliberate preventive action, and—above all—recognition that prevailing assumptions about human identity and destiny have been cruelly misshapen by the profoundly unsustainable trajectory of the last 150 years."
Brilliantly said. I believe a lot of resistance to the idea that our way of life is unsustainable stem from grief that the future that we were "promised" by the last century of media and marketing isn't coming. The first step towards adapting to the imminent collapse of the high-consumption lifestyle due to energy and resource limitations is to process this grief.
The way you’re phrasing that gives me a certain impression of your beliefs about what is and isn’t sustainable that may not be warranted, so I should ask explicitly:
What do you think a sustainable way of life looks like? In terms of both global population size and typical life experiences.
Here's a fun little exercise:
Open up a spreadsheet.
Label the first column C for capital. This starts at 1.
Label the second column T for total resources extracted. This starts at 0.
Label the third column r for resources extracted this step.
Label the fourth column E for extraction efficiency.
Label the 5th column m for maintenance. Make it proportional to capital.
Now, for each step:
E is some positive function of T with a negative slope. It doesn't have to have a finite area under the curve (you don't have to assume total resources to be finite, in other words). You just have to assume that the next unit of resources to be extracted requires a bit more effort than the last one. Use E = .1*exp(-.01*T) or something like that.
r = C*E
m = C*k where k is any positive number between 1 and 0- .01 is a good constant to use.
C += r*q - m where q is again some constant, say .2
T += r
Now observe the behavior of the system. Plot the value of C over time. For the above constants you'll want to include about 3000 steps.
from math import exp
k = .01
q = .2
C = 1
T = 0
E = lambda T: 0.1 * exp(-0.01 * T)
for step in range(3000):
r = C * E(T)
m = C * k
C += r * q - m
T += r
print('%5i %g' % (step, C))
The basic M.O. here is not new: (1) Present the basic math of exponential growth to show that exponential growth cannot continue indefinitely; (2) claim that sustaining our present lifestyle would require exponential growth to continue indefinitely; (3) conclude that our present lifestyle cannot be sustained.
what's the issue with step 2? Our present lifestyle does seem to require constant growth, and if this is not the case it would be nice for someone to explain how we can keep getting more out of the system without contributing more to the system.
This is filled with a lot of hand waving bad math, which distracts from some reasonable points.
rule of 70tells us that the time it will take a system or collection to double in size is 70 divided by thepercentage growth rate. The time units depend on how the time over which percentage growthis expressed—like 2%per dayor 2%per year, for instance. The rule works most accurately forsmaller growth rates, under 10%.
Actually showing 1.10^7 = 1.949 vs 1.01^70 = 2.007, so you can approximate by dividing percentage by 70 between 1% and 10% is fine. Stating it as true in the text then adding a note well no not actually latter on is problematic.
Sorry if I’m missing something, but… what’s the problem with that quote? That’s a widely-used heuristic that helps to estimate doubling times without using a calculator (see [the Wikipedia entry](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_72).
He does walk the reader through a lot of “back of the napkin” math, in order to help the reader get an intuitive sense of the models he’s using. But my impression overall is that he backs those hand-wavey calculations up with more serious calculations throughout the book.
I’m currently leaning in this direction myself. Not necessarily just this, but “big filter ahead” (or lots of small filters). Perhaps it will be this, perhaps it will be a Jonestown massacre but with entire O’Neill cylinders instead of individual people, leading to a Kardashev II scale Kessler syndrome.
1053r|4 years ago
"Hands down, solar is the only renewable resource capable of matching our current societal energy demand. Not only can it reach 18 TW, it can exceed the mark by orders of magnitude." (Section 13.9)
"We would likely not be discussing a finite planet or limits to growth or climate change if only one million humans inhabited the planet, even living at United States standards. We would perceive no meaningful limit to natural resources and ecosystem services." (Section 3.5) An energy source that is thousands of times more abundant than fossil fuels is basically equivalent to having one one thousandth the population.
While I must acknowledge the truth that converting things to run on electricity will be a large engineering and logistical challenge, and that battery production must be scaled up (as well as converting some loads to run where the sun is shining), both of these challenges pale in comparison to the money part of that first quote: "exceed the mark by orders of magnitude." In other words, even if we could only store electricity at an efficiency of 1%, we'd be fine. (In actuality, we ALREADY store electricity at efficiencies over 80 times that.)
Ecosystem services, availability of raw materials, and many other challenges exist as well. However, all of them are meaningless in the face of "we would perceive no meaningful limit to natural resources." Having an energy source that is thousands to millions of times more abundant than the ones we use today lets us substitute energy for basically all of our needs. (Need clean water? Energy + dirty water = clean water. Need more steel? Dirt + energy = steel. Need to remove CO2 from the atmosphere? You can do it, at only the cost of several times the energy you got putting the CO2 into the atmosphere, which is only a few % of the future energy budget from solar. Think of it this way. In the past, we relied on cutting down forests for heat. Putting the forests back would have seemed like an insurmountable task, because our fuel came from the forests. But now that we run on fossil fuels, which are approximately 100x more abundant than forests, putting the forests back is a matter of politics and land usage discussions, not one of practicality.)
In other words, we are the only ones we have to blame if the future is not MUCH wealthier than the past, both per person and also for our total economy.
justbrowsingthx|4 years ago
Regardless, I think the book remains useful for its intended audiences as a quantitative assessment of available energy sources given our growth path.
[0] "The rookie mistake here is assuming that adults are in charge." (p. 134)
f0e4c2f7|4 years ago
> "Fusion is therefore a complicated and not particularly cheap way to generate electricity. Meanwhile, we are not running terribly short on renewable ways to produce electricity: solar; wind; hydroelectric; geother- mal; tidal."
Fusion is the key to long term success for humanity. It paves the way to essentially unlimited cheap burstable power.
In the even longer term plasma fusion offers a way to create the heavier elements that we are running out of here on earth. Forged in a manmade nuclear furnace.
These pesky climate problems can be solved. We just have to mine ideas out of nature now instead of minerals.
If you're trying to think about humanity's long term prospects fusion should be the crown jewel, not an after thought you handwave away. I believe today we spend somewhere on the order of 1% of what we should be spending on fusion research.
philipkglass|4 years ago
The only heavy element that we actually "use up" to any significant degree is uranium, which is consumed for energy, but if we had cheap fusion energy uranium consumption would plummet. Even if we could make artificial uranium it would be a net-energy-losing process to make artificial uranium with fusion power instead of using fusion power directly.
ttiurani|4 years ago
The thing is, it's not just climate that's the problem. The "pesky" problem is that we've crossed or are soon crossing most planetary boundaries[1] at the same time.
Fusion doesn't stop and reverse biodiversity loss, chemical pollutants, land-system change, biochemical flows, ocean plastic buildup and ocean acidification.
To stop the ecological collapse, the necessary condition is that the global North drastically reduces material flows and energy consumption. With less energy use, fusion also becomes less critical.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_boundaries
bsedlm|4 years ago
the problem is the human psique, not technological capabilities.
deltaonefour|4 years ago
makerofspoons|4 years ago
Brilliantly said. I believe a lot of resistance to the idea that our way of life is unsustainable stem from grief that the future that we were "promised" by the last century of media and marketing isn't coming. The first step towards adapting to the imminent collapse of the high-consumption lifestyle due to energy and resource limitations is to process this grief.
ben_w|4 years ago
What do you think a sustainable way of life looks like? In terms of both global population size and typical life experiences.
fallingfrog|4 years ago
Label the first column C for capital. This starts at 1.
Label the second column T for total resources extracted. This starts at 0.
Label the third column r for resources extracted this step.
Label the fourth column E for extraction efficiency.
Label the 5th column m for maintenance. Make it proportional to capital.
Now, for each step:
E is some positive function of T with a negative slope. It doesn't have to have a finite area under the curve (you don't have to assume total resources to be finite, in other words). You just have to assume that the next unit of resources to be extracted requires a bit more effort than the last one. Use E = .1*exp(-.01*T) or something like that.
r = C*E
m = C*k where k is any positive number between 1 and 0- .01 is a good constant to use.
C += r*q - m where q is again some constant, say .2
T += r
Now observe the behavior of the system. Plot the value of C over time. For the above constants you'll want to include about 3000 steps.
(Edit: forgot the maintenance term)
carapace|4 years ago
reedjosh|4 years ago
So much so that this trivial exercise imparts real wisdom and is definitely not mental masturbation.
bckr|4 years ago
pdonis|4 years ago
The issue, of course, is in step 2.
adamsmith143|4 years ago
Figured this out decades ago.
chordalkeyboard|4 years ago
arrosenberg|4 years ago
Retric|4 years ago
rule of 70tells us that the time it will take a system or collection to double in size is 70 divided by thepercentage growth rate. The time units depend on how the time over which percentage growthis expressed—like 2%per dayor 2%per year, for instance. The rule works most accurately forsmaller growth rates, under 10%.
Actually showing 1.10^7 = 1.949 vs 1.01^70 = 2.007, so you can approximate by dividing percentage by 70 between 1% and 10% is fine. Stating it as true in the text then adding a note well no not actually latter on is problematic.
zaphod4prez|4 years ago
He does walk the reader through a lot of “back of the napkin” math, in order to help the reader get an intuitive sense of the models he’s using. But my impression overall is that he backs those hand-wavey calculations up with more serious calculations throughout the book.
Loanor|4 years ago
ZeroGravitas|4 years ago
unknown|4 years ago
[deleted]
ben_w|4 years ago
I’m currently leaning in this direction myself. Not necessarily just this, but “big filter ahead” (or lots of small filters). Perhaps it will be this, perhaps it will be a Jonestown massacre but with entire O’Neill cylinders instead of individual people, leading to a Kardashev II scale Kessler syndrome.
westcort|4 years ago
notRacistSir|4 years ago
[deleted]