Does the world really need 'more power'?

[russ_watters]

I'd challenge you to watch a film by David Attenborough I have watched recently, called "A Life on Our Planet" and maintain the same conclusion you have just made there (his life ... the title is a 'take' on his various series 'Life on Our Planet').

He says one stark and ultimately indisputable comment, which I will paraphrase (as I can't remember exactly); "Nature has learned the secret of life; a species will only flourish when all the species around it flourish." but I would go further and say the environment as a whole needs to flourish...

It is not necessarily and simply a question of whether our lives are or are not 'sustainable' from here this point now, but whether we can bring back balance to our world.

I looked it up and I might watch, but from the synopsis/trailer it appears to be his personal nostalgic vision of planet Earth. That's fine, but at face value, I don't accept the validity of that paraphrase. It's a common belief among environmentalists that feels religious and looks backwards to me.

To me, nature is characterized by violence, not harmony. Organisms don't seek balance or harmony or assisting each other to flourish, but rather they are constantly fighting each other for survival; killing each other. Maybe this is a Gaia type theory personification of "nature", where there's a belief in an overall balance beyond the individual aims of animals/species. But most of the species that have ever lived are extinct exactly because they've lost the evolutionary tournament and have been killed off by more successful species. There are no permanent balances, only temporary stalemates.

Much of environmentalism appears to me to be primarily an aesthetic belief in the beauty of nature, which is then attempted to find a logical wrapper to enable it to be preserved. I don't see any reason to believe it shouldn't be possible to create a fully artificial biosphere containing exactly the plants and animals we deem worthy of serving our needs. That's the basis for speculated permanent settlements on Mars, for example.

 

[russ_watters]

Let's first look at things that are easy to measure:
Publications per year is easy to measure and goes up rapidly. Open research problems left in these publications go up rapidly, too - simply from having more publications.
The number of people working as scientists goes up rapidly.

I don't think what we know or have left to learn about the universe is a function of the population of scientists. Rather, I think the barrier to entry is funding. Scientists can invent their own questions to answer, and those questions only have to be interesting enough to be awarded funding. This way, it is conceivable that more and more scientists could answer smaller and smaller questions, forever -- endlessly adding another decimal place to observations of already proven theories.

But what's more relevant is probably impact on our lives:

That's technology not science, so its relevance is limited to how science has unlocked technological progress. For example, the understanding of the inner workings of the atom unlocking nuclear fission power. That was a big set of scientific discoveries. Impactful. But unless it's turtles all the way down, there has to be an end to the impactful discoveries. I agree that the 20th century was one of spectacular progress. But I see it as a sprint to a nearby finish line, not as an entry into an infinite void.

[edit]
Oh, and I'll suggest a metric as a counterpoint to your claim that any metric shows an increasing pace: Accuracy of prediction/measurement of the speed of light. These are asymptotically approaching exact. I use this example because there are sources online listing such measurements which can be plotted, but the same sort of logic/metric can apply to nearly anything we have thought to predict/model for an amount of time. Accuracy of orbit predictions, for example.

 

[mfb]

I don't see any reason to believe it shouldn't be possible to create a fully artificial biosphere containing exactly the plants and animals we deem worthy of serving our needs.

It should certainly be possible, but it is difficult. All attempts so far have failed. And people have tried. Biosphere 2 is probably the most notable example. They struggled with the food production, they struggled with the oxygen production, they didn't achieve a stable plant population.

I don't think what we know or have left to learn about the universe is a function of the population of scientists.

That was a post about the rate of progress, not about what's left to learn.

This way, it is conceivable that more and more scientists could answer smaller and smaller questions, forever -- endlessly adding another decimal place to observations of already proven theories.

If this would be true (a) we wouldn't get funding and (b) we couldn't increase the rate of technological progress.

so its relevance is limited to how science has unlocked technological progress

Yes, and the answer is so obvious that I didn't bother writing it out. But here we go: All this technological progress needed tons of recent scientific discoveries.

But I see it as a sprint to a nearby finish line, not as an entry into an infinite void.

Based on what? People have made these statements throughout history. Probably the most famous one was Michelson in 1894, just a little bit before special relativity and quantum mechanics started:

it seems probable that most of the grand underlying principles have been firmly established … An eminent physicist remarked that the future truths of physical science are to be looked for in the sixth place of decimals.

All of them were wrong. What makes you confident your prediction is better?

Oh, and I'll suggest a metric as a counterpoint to your claim that any metric shows an increasing pace: Accuracy of prediction/measurement of the speed of light.

That's an absurd metric because the speed of light is defined to be exactly 299792458 m/s. It has zero uncertainty, there is nothing you could improve. Does that mean science has been complete since 1983?
If you look at something we actually measure, then measurements often improve by one or two orders of magnitude per decade. Every order of magnitude is much more difficult to achieve than the previous, but despite increasing difficulty we keep this rate of improvement, sometimes over decades. If you include more historic data points, then progress is super-exponential.

 

[BillTre]

To me, nature is characterized by violence, not harmony. Organisms don't seek balance or harmony or assisting each other to flourish, but rather they are constantly fighting each other for survival; killing each other. Maybe this is a Gaia type theory personification of "nature", where there's a belief in an overall balance beyond the individual aims of animals/species. But most of the species that have ever lived are extinct exactly because they've lost the evolutionary tournament and have been killed off by more successful species. There are no permanent balances, only temporary stalemates.

There is certainly violence in nature, but not entirely.
There are plenty examples of cooperative interactions between organisms (or formerly separate organisms):

• fungi-tree interactions
• coral-photosynthetic algae
• mitocondria-archeal host cell
• chloroplast-plant cell pregenitor
• a person- their gut microbiota

I agree with your Gaia ideas, but it still not clear if species were actually directly killed by competing species or were just out competed in some less violent manner. Or it the case of the last dinosaurs, by violence from outer space.

 

[russ_watters]

There is certainly violence in nature, but not entirely.
There are plenty examples of cooperative interactions between organisms (or formerly separate organisms):

• fungi-tree interactions
• coral-photosynthetic algae
• mitocondria-archeal host cell
• chloroplast-plant cell pregenitor
• a person- their gut microbiota

Fair enough. Such symbiotic relationships are interesting. Do the gut bacteria still compete with each other?

I agree with your Gaia ideas, but it still not clear if species were actually directly killed by competing species or were just out competed in some less violent manner.

Is there a difference? If a tree grows taller than another tree in order to compete for sunlight, isn't it murdering the weaker/shorter tree? If you and I are both hungry and I shove you aside to grab an apple on the ground, did I "out compete" you or kill you? Does the distinction matter?

Or it the case of the last dinosaurs, by violence from outer space.

Good point -- I'm not sure how common that is, but in some cases sure, the environment changed and destroyed species. Humans, of course, are doing both.

 

[russ_watters]

It should certainly be possible, but it is difficult. All attempts so far have failed. And people have tried. Biosphere 2 is probably the most notable example. They struggled with the food production, they struggled with the oxygen production, they didn't achieve a stable plant population.

I'm aware. I didn't have a very high opinion of that project at the time, but maybe that was just because Pauly Shore starred in the movie. In any case, it is my understanding that that is the leading concept for longer-term Mars missions. The Martian was better.

That was a post about the rate of progress, not about what's left to learn.

Wat.

How can there be "progress" if there is nothing left to learn? Are we talking about the same thing?

If this would be true (a) we wouldn't get funding

Really? You'd still try though, right? That's an issue of salesmanship, not science, right? Has funding for science been constant over the past century or has it increased with GDP and population?

and (b) we couldn't increase the rate of technological progress.

Disagree. Technological progress may be unlocked by certain discoveries, but it can take years, decades or centuries for such technologies to mature and fully develop. Nuclear power took 9 years from first demonstration to first usable power, and was pretty mature within 4 decades -- which is awesome. Digital computers took 6 decades from invention to ubiquity (ENIAC to iPhone). But chemical rocketry took 1,100 years.

If the pace of advancement is accelerating, there should be identifiable technologies invented decades ago that should profoundly change the world in the next few years. What are they?

Also relevant: we have a lot more people working on these problems than in Newton's time.

Yes, and the answer is so obvious that I didn't bother writing it out. But here we go: All this technological progress needed tons of recent scientific discoveries.

Cool/agreed. The 20th century was amazing. But this current discussion is about the 21st century (and beyond). What groundbreaking discoveries did we have in 2005 that will unleash the next century of technology like we had in 1905?

Based on what?

It's a question as much as a statement, but it has a simple starting assumption: The Laws of the Universe exist. E.G., eventually we will learn how the universe actually works, and after that, there will be nothing else for Science to do but add decimal places to measurements.

It actually would shock me for you to disagree with me here. Are you literally saying you believe that The Laws of the Universe are infinite in extent and as a result we'll never learn them all, no matter how much we learn? Like, after molecules, atoms, protons and quarks there are an infinite number of additional elementary particles to discover? It's turtles all the way down? Really? I don't believe you could believe such a thing. Nor do I believe that you could fail to recognize that as we learn each next level the impact of the discovery decreases vs the impact of the previous discovery.

I could see this being an existential crisis for a scientist and I would imagine many if not most today have pondered the issue. Do scientists today believe there is so much left to learn that they will have the ability to substantially contribute before science Ends? Or hope? Or do they think that if a Grand Unified Theory is developed, that science will be Over?

People have made these statements throughout history. Probably the most famous one was Michelson in 1894, just a little bit before special relativity and quantum mechanics started:
All of them were wrong. What makes you confident your prediction is better?

You're asking/answering the wrong question. The question is: is there an end? If there is an end, then predictions of when it will occur won't necessarily be correct, but predictions that we are getting closer to it are always true.

That's an absurd metric because the speed of light is defined to be exactly 299792458 m/s. It has zero uncertainty, there is nothing you could improve. Does that mean science has been complete since 1983?

You're being disingenuous here. It means, exactly, that THIS aspect of science was declared to be complete in 1983. Prior to 1983 it was improving asymptotically toward zero error and at 1983 it was declared to be complete and perfect/exact. Finished. It wasn't an arbitrary decision to define it to be exact, it was done because it was found to be a constant and measured to enough precision to not be worth bothering to keep trying to make it more accurate. Science = finished.

If you look at something we actually measure, then measurements often improve by one or two orders of magnitude per decade. Every order of magnitude is much more difficult to achieve than the previous, but despite increasing difficulty we keep this rate of improvement, sometimes over decades. If you include more historic data points, then progress is super-exponential.

I'm aware. Again, you seem to be putting your emphasis behind the effort, not the result. As a practicing scientist, that seems appropriate. But I can't help but wonder if you have that existential question poking the back of your brain that the importance of the next order of magnitude of precision isn't defined by its difficulty but its utility.

 

[russ_watters]

On technology; power and transportation are probably our most important and best yardsticks. They've been issues/barriers since the dawn of humanity and inventions of new methods can be cited as benchmarks. From walking, to pulling something, to the wheel, to the steam engine, to the rocket ship, we're always asking "what can I power with this?" or "what can I do with this if I have more power?" To me, the slowdown and even pullback of transportation technology in the past 50 years is telling regarding scientific/technological barriers. What is the next technological advancement to rival the inception of the jet age or space travel 60 years ago? It was 66 years from the Wright Flyer to Apollo 11. It's been 51 years since Apollo 11.

 

[mfb]

How can there be "progress" if there is nothing left to learn?

You are jumping to completely new questions every time. Let's look at the post history:

I made a post demonstrating that there is more progress than ever before
"But that's progress, not what is left to learn"
I made another post pointing out that, indeed, this previous post was about progress of science.
And how exactly does that lead to your new question, which starts with a wrong premise anyway? The fact that there is progress clearly shows that there is something to learn.

Really?

Yes, really. It's absurd to suggest all funding agencies and people setting their budgets would be completely stupid. Especially as we clearly see the results of their funding.

Technological progress may be unlocked by certain discoveries, but it can take years, decades or centuries for such technologies to mature and fully develop
[...]
If the pace of advancement is accelerating, there should be identifiable technologies invented decades ago that should profoundly change the world in the next few years. What are they?

There is no minimal waiting period. A new revolutionary technology next year that uses an effect discovered last year wouldn't be any evidence of science slowing down. It's the opposite, in fact. Sudden profound changes of the world are very rare and hard to predict. If you are fine with slower changes, they are all around us, especially in the technology sector.

The Laws of the Universe exist. E.G., eventually we will learn how the universe actually works, and after that, there will be nothing else for Science to do but add decimal places to measurements.

Knowing the fundamental laws of the universe does not mean knowing everything. We know all the fundamental physics that's relevant e.g. in a brain. But that doesn't mean we fully understand the brain. We barely started understanding how it works. We also know all the fundamental physics that's relevant in high temperature superconductors. But we don't know why they are actually superconducting. We can't even predict the mass spectrum of all the hadrons we know, relatively simple composite particles following laws we know very well. And so on.
Even if someone magically hands us the fundamental laws of the universe tomorrow we wouldn't be at the end of science. Most scientists wouldn't even see an impact on their work. Some particle physicists would need new jobs after verifying the laws (assuming we can, with our hardware), others would continue studying hadrons just like before.

Are you literally saying you believe that The Laws of the Universe are infinite in extent and as a result we'll never learn them all, no matter how much we learn?

I never said anything like that, neither literally nor figuratively. I don't know where you get that from.
I said we are far away from any limits of the total amount of knowledge we can collect.

If there is an end, then predictions of when it will occur won't necessarily be correct, but predictions that we are getting closer to it are always true.

Trivially, yes, but where is the point? That doesn't make a daily prediction "we are close to it, this time for real!" useful.
We'll notice when we are getting anywhere close to limits. More and more research will not lead to new open questions that can be addressed. Ultimately such a limit might not come from things that can be studied, but things that can be studied within the limits of a human brain. Unless computers expand that limit. Anyway, not the point. We don't see any indication of such a limit even for humans.

You're being disingenuous here. It means, exactly, that THIS aspect of science was declared to be complete in 1983. Prior to 1983 it was improving asymptotically toward zero error and at 1983 it was declared to be complete and perfect/exact.

There was nothing discovered in 1983 (about the speed of light, obviously). We didn't learn anything new about the speed of light in 1983. We just chose to define the meter based on a transition wavelength of a cesium isotope instead of a transition wavelength of a krypton isotope. It's the same cesium isotope that also defines our second, which gives the speed of light an exact value.

It wasn't an arbitrary decision to define it to be exact

It was exactly that, an arbitrary decision. It had good motivations, of course, but ultimately the choice was arbitrary. We could also have switched the definition of a second to the krypton isotope, leading to a different value for the speed of light. Or just kept the 1960 definition. It's all arbitrary. In the future we might switch the definition to optical clocks. We'll almost certainly decide to keep the value the same for convenience, but we wouldn't have to.

Again, you seem to be putting your emphasis behind the effort, not the result.

Overcoming the effort is proof of the progress. You need to learn more and at a faster rate to keep up with the trend, and we do that.

But I can't help but wonder if you have that existential question poking the back of your brain that the importance of the next order of magnitude of precision isn't defined by its difficulty but its utility.

GPS? NMR? MEG? MFI? Time of flight PET? Gravimeters to look for underground resources? All the result of improving the precision of something by many orders of magnitude until it became useful. And that list is far from complete.
Don't worry about me, I see the results of research everywhere.

 

[cmb]

I looked it up and I might watch, but from the synopsis/trailer it appears to be his personal nostalgic vision of planet Earth. That's fine, but at face value, I don't accept the validity of that paraphrase. It's a common belief among environmentalists that feels religious and looks backwards to me.

To me, nature is characterized by violence, not harmony. Organisms don't seek balance or harmony or assisting each other to flourish, but rather they are constantly fighting each other for survival; killing each other. Maybe this is a Gaia type theory personification of "nature", where there's a belief in an overall balance beyond the individual aims of animals/species. But most of the species that have ever lived are extinct exactly because they've lost the evolutionary tournament and have been killed off by more successful species. There are no permanent balances, only temporary stalemates.

Much of environmentalism appears to me to be primarily an aesthetic belief in the beauty of nature, which is then attempted to find a logical wrapper to enable it to be preserved. I don't see any reason to believe it shouldn't be possible to create a fully artificial biosphere containing exactly the plants and animals we deem worthy of serving our needs. That's the basis for speculated permanent settlements on Mars, for example.

Trust me, just watch it and let what he puts forward present itself.

I am not an enviro-activist but enjoy my place sitting on the fence. However, this was quite compelling.

Partly it is because I spent a little time in New Mexico and am aware of how fragile that desert habitat is (because there are State rules what not to do and such). This film somehow reminded me of that, and made me realize that although we 'see' thick forests and places filled with animals, birds, fish, whathaveyou, actually, there are just as 'balanced' as that desert environment and as we chip away at it thinking 'there's a lot of this place, how are we affecting it' the simple evidence is that we are affecting it.

The world's biosphere has to find its own set of balances and regulations, and if we have already made the mistake of thinking we have no effect on it, then let us not compound that mistake by now thinking we can set our own controls and regulations for it.

I was particularly struck by Attenborough's description of the early studies of the herds of the Serengeti. Although the herds are too numerous to even see when they appear in a spot to graze, stretching over the horizon in their millions at times, and although the Serengeti is very large (not quite 'endless' as the name suggests), nonetheless that herd is 'a particular size' and the plains are 'a particular size' and if one or other shrinks then it upsets the balance of the whole ecocycle that revolves around them.

If we think we can manage, control and regulate those near infinite number of interactions at the biological scale, then we're even more stupid now than we were when we thought we had no impact on it all. We'd have learned nothing. We have to find a natural balance with the environment, not create our own artificial balances. If we try, we won't be part of that artificial balance for long, and nature will win back control, with or without us.

I am not saying it has to be the same balance as it was centuries ago, we just have to first balance what we do so it is sustainable, then mitigate or reverse other non-sustainable effects that our so-called 'sustainability' is having.

Extra sustainable energy, or even unlimited energy, will surely help us on this mission to enable more compact and less 'impacting' living, and to reprocess used materials.

 

[mfb]

If we think we can manage, control and regulate those near infinite number of interactions at the biological scale, then we're even more stupid than we were when we thought we had no impact on it all.

Introduce rabbits to Australia, what could go wrong?
Introduce cane toads to Australia, what could go wrong?
Introduce foxes to Australia, what could go wrong?
...

So many people thought that. There are certainly cases where introducing a new species worked fine, but then you have all the cases where they became harmful to many other species, often including humans indirectly.

 

[iollmann]

Notably, we will eventually (very long term) need more power of the right kind. The Earth is in thermodynamic equilibrium with space. If we generally a lot more power here on the surface to power machinery and whatnot, that energy eventually all becomes heat, and shifts the Earth's thermal equilibrium towards hotter. This is no different from excess CO2 causing more heat from the sun to be trapped in our atmosphere resulting in global warming. We can have the same effect if we just generate enough power from power plants.

If the power plant is generating "new" energy that would not otherwise have been on planet Earth, then it heats up the earth. Examples might be fossil fuels, nuclear, and geothermal. If the power plant is using energy that is already at the surface of the Earth, such as wind, hydro or solar, then we are just using the energy that would have become heat to do work before it ultimately becomes heat. So those are more benign. But there are exceptions. We would not want to put large solar mirrors in space to increase solar power generation down here on earth, because that would be directing new radiant energy onto the surface that otherwise would not have been here, thereby increasing the total heat load. If we came up with some way to shed vast amounts of heat into space, then we could afford to go crazy with these other sources of power, but I am not sure what that would be. Maybe someone will build a 200 mile high thermoelectric generator + space elevator. :-)

Fortunately, the amounts of energy here are very very large. Solar irradiance on Earth is about 173,000 TW. Global electricity power production (doesn't include fossil fuels used directly for non electricity production) is currently around mean 3 TW. So it is pretty small at the moment, around .002%. But it is not inconceivable that our power needs might climb to 5-10 times what they are today in our lifetimes, and certainly could go much higher than that. It has doubled in the last 20 years. At that rate, maybe in 200 years, it will be around 2% of total solar irradiance and starting to cause big problems if it is not endogenous energy. The good news is that there is still a huge amount of unclaimed energy hitting the Earth in terms of solar radiation, and we should be able to power healthy economic expansion with that for some centuries to come. It just means papering more of the surface of the Earth with solar panels.

 

[iollmann]

But, but, I don't want to be a herbivore. Well, except, Beyond Burgers and Morning Star "meats" aren't bad. I suppose I could survive on those...

 

[iollmann]

Ultimately the question in the OP comes down to a value judgement because of the word "need". How we decide to live and use our resources is a choice based on what we want for a standard of living.

As far as I know, most if not all developed countries are currently reducing their energy intensity (energy use per person), but developing countries have a long way to go to reach the energy intensity and level of development of the developed countries. But even the developed countries could increase their energy intensity in the future if energy gets cheaper and cleaner. We can always find new ways to expend energy.

We can burn unlimited amounts mining for bitcoin and other make-work problems.
Enforcing scarcity via make-work should be banned.

 

[iollmann]

On technology; power and transportation are probably our most important and best yardsticks. They've been issues/barriers since the dawn of humanity and inventions of new methods can be cited as benchmarks. From walking, to pulling something, to the wheel, to the steam engine, to the rocket ship, we're always asking "what can I power with this?" or "what can I do with this if I have more power?" To me, the slowdown and even pullback of transportation technology in the past 50 years is telling regarding scientific/technological barriers. What is the next technological advancement to rival the inception of the jet age or space travel 60 years ago? It was 66 years from the Wright Flyer to Apollo 11. It's been 51 years since Apollo 11.

I feel that we are in for a dramatic expansion in energy demand. The gating problem right now is the inadequacy of robot general purpose AI to successfully function in the real world. Once that problem is solved, labor is no longer a limiting factor. We can have robot cars, robot domestic servants, robots taking care of robots, robots mining more raw materials to make robots, and robots mining yet more raw materials to make those robots, and ultimately robots to achieve modest efficiency improvements by squishing those humans not needed for robot continuance and using them for axle grease.

Not to mention off world travel, faster offworld travel and relativistic off world travel.

Get labor scarcity out of the way, and the sky is the limit! (or not, since we are talking space travel here..)

 

[cmb]

Notably, we will eventually (very long term) need more power of the right kind. The Earth is in thermodynamic equilibrium with space. If we generally a lot more power here on the surface to power machinery and whatnot, that energy eventually all becomes heat, and shifts the Earth's thermal equilibrium towards hotter. This is no different from excess CO2 causing more heat from the sun to be trapped in our atmosphere resulting in global warming. We can have the same effect if we just generate enough power from power plants.

If the power plant is generating "new" energy that would not otherwise have been on planet Earth, then it heats up the earth. Examples might be fossil fuels, nuclear, and geothermal. If the power plant is using energy that is already at the surface of the Earth, such as wind, hydro or solar, then we are just using the energy that would have become heat to do work before it ultimately becomes heat. So those are more benign. But there are exceptions. We would not want to put large solar mirrors in space to increase solar power generation down here on earth, because that would be directing new radiant energy onto the surface that otherwise would not have been here, thereby increasing the total heat load. If we came up with some way to shed vast amounts of heat into space, then we could afford to go crazy with these other sources of power, but I am not sure what that would be. Maybe someone will build a 200 mile high thermoelectric generator + space elevator. :-)

Fortunately, the amounts of energy here are very very large. Solar irradiance on Earth is about 173,000 TW. Global electricity power production (doesn't include fossil fuels used directly for non electricity production) is currently around mean 3 TW. So it is pretty small at the moment, around .002%. But it is not inconceivable that our power needs might climb to 5-10 times what they are today in our lifetimes, and certainly could go much higher than that. It has doubled in the last 20 years. At that rate, maybe in 200 years, it will be around 2% of total solar irradiance and starting to cause big problems if it is not endogenous energy. The good news is that there is still a huge amount of unclaimed energy hitting the Earth in terms of solar radiation, and we should be able to power healthy economic expansion with that for some centuries to come. It just means papering more of the surface of the Earth with solar panels.

I don't believe we will get to the point where our own heat outputs make a measurable difference, as an actual heat source.

There is also about 20 TW coming out of the Earth (natural nuclear power .. cf https://blogs.scientificamerican.co...-as-source-of-more-than-half-of-Earth's-heat/ ) and so we are in the middle of petawatts in and dozens of terawatts out, and those two heat fluxes have to find an equilibrium with 'the rest-of-universe', which is therefore totally dominated by the radiation processes away from, and reflected off, our planet.

Whatever we do, and whatever the actual reality of those heat fluxes, we either work with them or .. we kill ourselves off. So we're not really going to change them on a millennia-averaged timescale, which I think is your "eventually (very long time scale)". Either we have little to no effect (and seek to change our behaviours if we are having an effect), or as a species we die off. Pretty simple choices, really, take your pick.