http://physics.ucsd.edu/...07/galactic-scale-energy/

This is an interesting argument about growth :)

Summary: if we assume our current growth rates will hold, we will need more energy than is produced in the galaxy by stars by 2400 years from now...

275 years from now we'd run out of energy at 100% of our land surface covered with 20% efficient solar panels....

Current growth rate average over how long time?

We'll simply have to make floating solar panels the norm. They'll also be more effective due to reflected sunlight. We can prolong existence for 100 years longer.

That was such a good idea that I had to google it. Ha, some Italian just completed the first floating solar panel rig like 3 days ago.

I can make a blog and claim crazy fluff too while siting no facts whatsoever. As well as taking data and manipulating it so that it supports whatever tinfoil theory I'd like it too.

----

But seriously:

This analysis is an easy target for criticism, given the tunnel-vision of its premise. I would enjoy shredding it myself. Chiefly, continued energy growth will likely be unnecessary if the human population stabilizes.

voila EE has discovered the exponential function.

trife, in addition to your argument, this also suggests that we will in no way currtail our energy usage per person, which is already very obviously occurring, given that we're implementing more energy-efficient everything, as well as more efficient methods to produce said energy.

The solution to our energy problems lie in the realm of physics, or perhaps in paranormal type physics..

We are operating our energy production system using very old ideas from the days of the Laws of Thermodynamics, and the gas laws which drove the industrial revolution. PV=nRT.

Suppose they are wrong. Suppose that zero degrees K is NOT absolute zero. It is after all just an extrapolation of the above formula. Suppose a heat engine MORE efficient than a Carnot engine is possible and our laws of entropy are incorrect.

In the 1950's, Wilhelm Reich shut down the energy grid for the entire Eastern seaboard of the US. He lived in Massachusetts. He disasapeared and the US government burned all his writings. My godmother, who has a nuclear bomb shelter with automatic weapons and tunnels, food, oxygen, and a buffalo farm in the Berkshire hills, along with laboratories, has copies of those lost manuscripts. (Buffalo have never been found to develop a cancer)

But I'm rambling. Anyway, keep an open mind.

watch out homeland security probably has this board monitored and listed among its 5 million + large list of suspects. they will probably trace your grandma and disappear her and the writings!!

godmother.. lol But yeah, I'm sure you're right. Waco II

toma: I wasn't saying we didn't know about the exponential function ;) I was just amused at the extension of the argument to galactic proportions; "We'll run out of solar energy hitting the planet in 275 years" just doesn't have the same effect as "We'll run out of energy from EVERY STAR IN THE GALAXY in 2400 years".

Though it is, of course, mathematically equivalent.



The thermodynamic arguments are also really cool in there.


And Getafix: Thermodynamics is pretty solid, don't be betting on them being wrong. It be a better bet to re-mortgage your house to buy lottery tickets...

ya, very interesting read!

making the earth hotter than the sun sounds like fun! :p

I certainly don't see the harm in doing that...

also pang, irc

Thermodynamics theory is very solid and practically useful and has been for centuries now. So is F=MA, MV1=MV2 and other Newtonian physics, but not at the speed of light.

I think thermodynamics is missing something at below absolute zero, and perhaps is not accounting for the paranormal, or for "life" forces that we currently ignore in science. Wilhelm Reich discovered a way to capture what he called Orgone energy. It was a type of cosmic energy, and was released or focused by orgasms!


Just hoping there is something in the energy area that we have completely missed and that will save us. I read a lot of scifi :)

PS. hey, if we added orgone energy accumulators to the technology in the Express Game, maybe everyone wouldn't be such douchebags :)

just turn off the bloody particle accelerators.