klapauzius
Well-known member
I just found the time to watch the whole cartoon. Its depressing, but flawed on the ultimate assessment of energy
available.
Solar power alone could power the whole US, if people would just prioritize. The same goes for nuclear fusion. Yes it always has been 20 years in the future, but only because nobody wanted to invest in it.
Here is an interesting article if you want to know why we dont have fusion power plants today:
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/04/13/eu-research-idUKL6E8FC6W620120413" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
To quote:
"The European Union has poured over 100 billion euros into technology research carried out by companies and academics over the last 25 years to try to keep up with U.S. and Asian innovation."
That are the EU (the worlds largest economy, mind you) expenditures on ALL technology. At today's rates that would about
130 billon dollars in 25(!!!!) years.
The US military budget is more than 4 times that in a single year!
So, if the space in the "bottles" for the cute little bacteria gets to small, we just need to re-prioritize where and how we spend our money. In addition to that, population growth will inevitably stop, as countries get richer. Exponential growth is just an unrealistic idealization of the observed data, from the bacteria and elsewhere it is know that growth more follows a logistic function which settles into a stable end state (at reasonable growth rates....it can turn chaotic at rates like 200-300 % but those are not common in nature).
So no there is no need to give up on globalization (which is good for everyone) and to fall back to medieval provincialism and an innovation-unfriendly, equally medieval, monetary system (proposed as a "solution" in that cartoon).
available.
Solar power alone could power the whole US, if people would just prioritize. The same goes for nuclear fusion. Yes it always has been 20 years in the future, but only because nobody wanted to invest in it.
Here is an interesting article if you want to know why we dont have fusion power plants today:
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/04/13/eu-research-idUKL6E8FC6W620120413" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
To quote:
"The European Union has poured over 100 billion euros into technology research carried out by companies and academics over the last 25 years to try to keep up with U.S. and Asian innovation."
That are the EU (the worlds largest economy, mind you) expenditures on ALL technology. At today's rates that would about
130 billon dollars in 25(!!!!) years.
The US military budget is more than 4 times that in a single year!
So, if the space in the "bottles" for the cute little bacteria gets to small, we just need to re-prioritize where and how we spend our money. In addition to that, population growth will inevitably stop, as countries get richer. Exponential growth is just an unrealistic idealization of the observed data, from the bacteria and elsewhere it is know that growth more follows a logistic function which settles into a stable end state (at reasonable growth rates....it can turn chaotic at rates like 200-300 % but those are not common in nature).
So no there is no need to give up on globalization (which is good for everyone) and to fall back to medieval provincialism and an innovation-unfriendly, equally medieval, monetary system (proposed as a "solution" in that cartoon).
