Ever heard of heat pollution?

Well, duh. Assuming human population doesn't die/migrate in exponential fashion in the mean time, we'll be producing more electricity by fusion than we receive in solar radiation by 2600 or so.

"Duh" just because, exponents tend to do that.

Presumably, people will have realized that by then, and moved to other planets, installed sun shades at L1, built The Matrix to pacify humanity, etc. And assuming fusion (of any kind, presumably the real, high temperature stuff, not the pseudosciency kind) takes off, which really has no physical reason not to, in this century.

And yes, by the way, there's more than enough deuterium in the oceans to seriously affect Earth's climate by brute force alone. Let alone hydrogen, which we should be able to fuse long before then as well.

(Regarding mitigation: note, by the way, my supposition about exponential decline of population. History has so far shown that power consumption per capita is rising as well as population, so it will presumably take more than just stabilizing population, but a seriously declining (and ever more powerful) population to stabilize power consumption.)

Since that's unsustainable, I suppose I would predict somewhere between today and 2600, we will reach peak humans, and then a little later, peak fusion. After that, further growth either has to be inward (Matrix?) or outward (space colonies).

Probably both, as the adventerous will "evaporate" from the planet, cooling it to a self-interested husk of a society behind... much like those Borg-assimilated planets in Star Trek, only with more trolling and Anonymous and cat pictures, and less militant assimilation. ;-)

Tim

What?

I saw this article/blog of a scientist talking to an economist at a diner party (or something). He explained that physically we can't have 5% or 1% economic growth forever. At some point we run out of energy or burn up in the waste heat.

George H.

To Mike, I'm sick of LENR updates.

If you wanted to try and build your own, I'd think it a fools errand, but I'd also be happy to guide you one your way as much as I can. After all it's the journey and not the destination that is fun.

George H.

Yes. It's the hot air produced during an election year that does the most damage. Sorry, but I can't offer any non-violent solutions.

I was at last year's National Measurement Institute (Australia) awards ceremony where one of two awards went to a guy who's devotes his life to measuring net solar/black-body radiation absorbed and radiated. They have measurement accuracy around 1% now - of around 342W/m^2 averaged across the entire planetary surface. The error is under 4W/m^2, which is thought to be about the order of the amount of heat generated internally... but until we can measure the net radiation more accurately, we have actually no idea how much internal nuclear warming is occurring.

Bottom line: No-one knows, but likely of the order of 2000TW in core warming.

Clifford Heath.

Don't know that "economic growth" is a physical thing. Perhaps you can have 5% growth in the "value" of iphone apps. Forever. :)

A ball of human flesh, expanding forever at the speed of light.

(which is still not exponential, i.e. would not support a 0.1% annual growth in the long term)

More believable than mikes LENR nonsense.

Sorry, we've already got one. It's verrrry niiiice.

Can you see it? Of course not--you're English!

Cheers, James Arthur

Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries!

It's a common problem where power stations dump warm water into rivers. A i ncrease of a few degrees can interfere in the life-cycle of fish, aquatic p lants etc. There is emotional environmentalism on both sides, eviro-haters and tree huggers alike. It's up to you if you want to be that way.

Fetchez la vache!

Cheers, James Arthur

It was clearly labeled as LENR, you didn't need to read it.

Do you think the year long test (about 80% complete) of a 1 Megawatt unit is 100% a made up story to convince investors to buy in? There is no megawatt unit, the company using it is fake? If it fails the fake test, the 3 Billion dollars in fake orders dries up?

Do I know LENR is real? I don't know, but I'm not wise enough to say it is impossible. I also am not so cynical that I just ignore all the people that say there is something there with a positive coefficient of performance.

Read one more update.

The minimum COP I see written is 3 to 1, 1kW in 4 kW out. Why do you need to put in 1kW, that's in the writings.

Mikek

James Arthur thinks that he's an American deluded idiot. In reality he's a right-wing deluded idiot and believes a whole lot of things that look like deluded fantasies to people (including Americans) who haven't spent time in a right-wing indocrination and re-education camp.

Is the theory of "peak humans" similar to the trashed theory of "peak oil"?

He means, of course, more cat pictures and LESS cats.

Since the fundamental idea underlying both propositions is sound - there's only so much oil underground, and only finite resources to support humans - yes.

The "peak oil" theory got trashed recently because it proponents hadn't ful ly taken on board the proposition that there's more oil down there than is easily accessible, so it's not actually the theory that got trashed, but ra ther a particular attempt to instantiate the theory.

But that's probably a little too complicated an idea for Robert Baer to ass imilate.

Have you made investments in this area?

Just time reading Google alerts.

Mikek

Yes. On its face. (A real test wouldn't have to run a whole year.)

Cheers, James Arthur

e:

a right-wing deluded idiot and believes a whole lot of things that look lik e deluded fantasies to people (including Americans) who haven't spent time in a right-wing indocrination and re-education camp.

Nee!