
2040: Diary of an interesting year - akkartik
http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2009/12/21/091221fi_fiction_simpson?currentPage=all
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citatus
God am I sick of tedious gloomy post-apocalyptic stories. I had them in school
when they were about nukes. Now they're about the environment but they're the
same boring gloomy defeatist stuff. Between those two dates, of course, we had
tens of millions of Chinese and Indian people being lifted out of poverty, the
fall of apartheid and the Soviet Union, democracy in Eastern Europe, the
Internet...

The future is the Jetsons, baby, not this shit.

~~~
rbanffy
I am not sure an economic collapse (although we more or less dodged that
bullet last year the shooting continues) would not drag a big part of mankind
into abject poverty.

We are seriously looking into a billion people having to move because of lack
of water, and a huge disruption on coastal communities - and a huge people
displacement because of that. We also have to contemplate a diminishing energy
budget per person. And all that in the next 90 years.

The future is a dangerous place, even if some pockets of it may look like The
Jetsons.

~~~
berntb
Why would the world have a lower energy budget?

Solar cells are getting cheaper about as fast as Moore's law. Nuclear power
(and if we're really lucky, fusion) can solve most problems.

As usual, the probably _real_ danger for people is... other people.

~~~
rbanffy
Solar cells are promising, but they cannot solve this problem - at the very
least, they can't generate power at night - we would have to rely on either an
integrated planetary grid or a huge amount of batteries.

Nuclear has only that much fuel to use. Uranium is non-renewable.

And fusion is yet to prove it can provide enough energy. We need better
reactors.

~~~
berntb
I originally argued against the statement that we will have a "lower energy
budget" in 90 years.

In short, I am arguing about developments that will come home to roost in less
than a decade -- and disprove your statements. Even if these developments take
five times as long, you are still vertigo-inducing wrong...

You are arguing like some sort of inverse Kurzweil. :-)

>>Solar cells are promising

They will never help much where I live. But not many live here.

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8386460.stm>

People in the highly populated parts of Europe will literally need a reason to
_not_ put them on the house -- in just a few years. Then add 80 more years of
tech development...

Consider how much energy you'll get from solar cells in a city's total roof
area. 1 square meter under the equator is 1 kW. If every person have 10 square
meters of solar cells, it should be enough for all energy use (below the polar
circle).

(The same goes for energy storage, developed over 90 years.)

>>Uranium is non-renewable.

Check up on Thorium reactors (and also on more modern versions of normal
reactors, which burns a larger fraction of the fuel).

Then add 90 more years of development...

There is lots of Uranium in the ground. Raise the prices and it will come up.

>>And fusion is yet to prove it can provide enough energy.

We will know about e.g. General Fusion, Polywell and TriAlpha in just a few
years.

Realistically, I'd not give that large chance for the individual projects
(10%? 20%?). But I'd be surprised if _nothing_ like that comes along in 90
years. Just consider space based solar, with the next-next-next-next
generation of super cheap launch systems.

~~~
rbanffy
_I originally argued against the statement that we will have a "lower energy
budget" in 90 years._

Given increasing population, how much more energy do you expect to be able to
use? While true we may be able to increase our energy usage, I doubt most of
mankind will be able to use as much as we do.

Also, do you realize how much effort (and energy expenditure) would it be to
manufacture 10 square meters for every human being alive? Count 10 billion
people - that's 100 billion square meters, not counting replacing damaged
solar cells.

Nuclear fission is also a point that could be much improved, but it is pretty
much a dead end unless we discover some new laws of physics. Nuclear
facilities are horrendously expensive to build and to safely manage. There are
safer designs, but how much safe is safe in a world you have to guard nuclear
fuel (and waste) and keep if from people who are willing to blow themselves
up?

As for fusion, you could add the chances of success if they were completely
different approaches, but they are not. Also, giving them even a 10% chance of
success is very optimistic.

There is no reason to panic, but there is reason to proceed carefully and
think through what we are doing and what we are going to do.

~~~
berntb
>>Also, do you realize how much effort (and energy expenditure) would it be to
manufacture 10 square meters for every human being alive?

Please think before writing.

Even today, much less energy is used making solar cells than they create...
For material, the latest thin film is _not_ a heavy weight per square meter...
(also a hint, we're not running out of silicon for glass...).

In fact, this would take very little resources compared to what a person need
to live.

If you want to make a coherent point, you'd note that my "energy budget"
didn't include transportation or industry.

We can apply all the clean energy sources we will have in twenty years, for
that.

Note that I'm just arguing known sources in one-two decades, assuming the
remaining decades are without developments! And you can't answer even that.

Let us assume space based solar in twenty years... 90? I can't even guess.

[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1215313...](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121531373)

Did you have any counter arguments against Thorium reactors? Or you're silent
because you lack arguments?

>>100 billion square meters [is a lot of area, sic]

You must be unique on this site to never have thought about how many square
meters go into a square km. :-)

10 km X 10 km == 100 million square meters. Enough to give 10 square meter to
10 million people, a BIG city. Go check a map, that area is _less than the
area of the roofs of such a city_...

(Most people will live in cities, it seems.)

Enough of the pre-high school math lesson...

>>As for fusion, you could add the chances of success if they were completely
different approaches, but they are not.

I don't think you know what you're talking about.

Please explain how a known success/failure of one of the three projects I
mentioned would influence the likelihood of the others? I can honestly not see
how you could argue that.

I am sorry, but I wonder if you're a troll. I can't be bothered with the rest.

~~~
rbanffy
Thorium produced in breeder reactors are object of research for many decades,
but very few (if any) commercial examples exist. I remember something out of
India, but I am not quite sure. There has been some movement around them in
China lately, IIRC, but it must be something on a tech demonstration level or
we would all be hearing a lot about it. I believe that when someone pull this
off, they will brag about it all over the media.

The General Fusion, TriAlpha and Polywell are all a bit far-fetched. GF's
thingie has a couple practical problems, like, for instance, extracting
tritium from their liquid lead-lithium mix. There are a lot of problems with
liquid-metal heat exchange itself, specially on a scale like the one they
propose. Radioactive liquid alkali metal exchangers elevate the NIMBY
complains to a whole new level. I would give them a 1%. The TriAlpha approach
requires higher temperatures than Hydrogen-Deuterium fusion. I would give it
about 0.5% chance of success in the next 100 years. If the conditions the GF
machine are to operate can be called extreme, I lack superlatives to name what
happens inside a Tri Alpha device. As for Polywell... I am an optimist. I
would give them a 5% chance. There are some issues on the geometry of the
fields (they had some leaks in the "corners") but I expect them to improve
steadily enough for sustained operation.

But we are not aiming at technology demonstrators running sustainable
reactions. We are aiming at commercial production on megawatt-scale
generators. It's not just rescaling your AutoCAD model, even if you don't
consider your whole supply chain.

As for solar, you seriously propose replacing the roofs of every home in the
planet with solar panels. I live in an apartment, on a 50's building that's
not very tall. There are 40 people living in the same building that has about
200 m2 of roof. That's 4 square meters per person on a not very dense
arrangement. It's one of the least dense blocks in my region. Most of my
friends live on 1 square-meter of roof per person or less zones (taller, newer
buildings). This math will hardly work out. As it is, we have a pretty green
energy matrix - mostly hydro. Even our cars run on sugarcane ethanol, but,
still, ethanol production takes up a lot of land that could be used to grow
food and that may be needed for that if the climate goes south and agriculture
takes a hit.

You are more optimistic than I am. Things change, but they change slowly.
Unless there is a huge political drive behind this, I don't believe we will
see much of it before it's too late.

We need politicians who can focus on periods longer than their terms. I am not
sure where to find them.

~~~
berntb
You claimed: " _As for fusion, you could add the chances of success if they
were completely different approaches, but they are not_."

1\. I asked for support: " _Please explain how a known success/failure of one
of the three projects I mentioned would influence the likelihood of the
others? I can honestly not see how you could argue that._ "

A basic presentation about the projects is NOT supporting that...

You back away from that, now that you have read up on the basics. Is that your
standard method when you have guessed about something you don't know anything
about?

2\. The only "real" thing we know about TriAlpha is that they got large
investments from people that presumably got more info. (They claim to publish
more in 2010.) There is data on a previous project and IIRC, they talked about
FRCs.

So on what do you base your claim about probabilites for TriAlpha?!

Note: AFAIK, to breed tritium is quite common for all fusion DT plans.

3\. I haven't looked into the subject about extracting hydrogen from the
lead/litium -- why do you claim it to be hard?

>>But we are not aiming at technology demonstrators running sustainable
reactions

AGAIN: You made a claim 90 years in the future. These will be built (if one
works) inside 20. And deployed inside 30. So your comment was totally
irrelevant for my thesis. But you knew that.

>>As for solar, you seriously propose replacing the roofs of every home in the
planet with solar panels.

Sigh, do I _have_ to quote the BBC reference I gave:

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8386460.stm>

 _A key goal for solar is what is known as grid parity. That is the point when
it is as cheap for someone to generate power on their homes as it is to buy it
from the grid.

It varies from country to country depending on electricity prices, but the
institute estimates that Italy - which has a combination of sunny weather and
relatively high electricity prices - should reach grid parity next year. Half
of Europe should be enjoying grid parity by 2020, it estimates._

So in ONE decade, half of Europe are expected to start plastering everything
with solar cells -- there would need to be a reason NOT to put solar cells on
a roof (or south facing side of a house).

I already explained about pre-high scool math. But _AGAIN_ :

10 x 10 km of solar cells is enough for ten million people. That is _nothing_
, considering that you can take unwanted land 50-100 km from the city, if you
_really_ need more.

Are you trolling?

That will happen in 10-20 years. Consider how much cheaper/better solar cells
will be in 30 years...

<http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/24240/>

Now go up to 90...

>>Unless there is a huge political drive behind this,

AGAIN: See BBC reference. Solar cells will generate energy _cheaper_ than
today's normal price for many countries -- already in less than 1-2 decades.
And they seem to keep falling in price.

Why would politicians be involved -- except wanting to tax solar cells?

>> [Thorium]

Active research subject today, India is building a prototype. Not totally
trivial, but there is afaik no known show stoppers for deployment inside 90
years(!). Do you know of any?

------
henrikschroder
I recently finished "Market Forces" by Richard Morgan, he's most famous for
his SF works, but this one is a near-future thriller where capitalism has gone
slightly too far, the roads are mostly abandoned since most people cannot
afford to drive anymore du to oil scarcity, so the roads are mostly used by
the executives of various corporations for car-duels about business contracts.
Our protagonist works for a "Conflict Investment" division, that essentially
funds small wars and revolutions around the world, and they win their
contracts by killing the representatives of the competing corporations on the
road.

Ironically, he's driving a SAAB, which due to market forces probably won't be
around for much longer. :-)

~~~
e40
I want to point out that the above plot seems really silly. When I read the
synopsis on Amazon, I didn't want to read it. A friend, who is also into
Richard Morgan, read it and highly recommended it. So, I gave it a shot. It
was a very good book. I was pleasantly surprised.

------
teuobk
...and someone, far away in a remote part of the Rocky Mountains, puts his
hand in the air and makes the sign of the dollar.

~~~
unalone
...returns to the real world, and finds it's hard to find a welcome when you
insist on looking at people like they're rodents.

Seriously, guys? We're still pretending like Rand wasn't batshit?

------
Russelldb
Isn't this just Cormac McCarthy's 'The Road'?

