I’m friendly to basically everything you’ve said, gjm ;-)
Once we are thinking in terms of collecting certain kinds of important resources now versus saving those important resources for some time in the deeper future…
...we’re already working with the core premise: that there ARE important resources (and energy is one of the most important).
Details about early or late usage of this or that resource are (relatively speaking) details.
Oil and coal are not things I’m not particularly in love with. Thorium might be better, I think? The sun seems likely to be around for a LONG time and solar panels in space seems like an idea with a LOT of room to expand!
There has to be “ideas” here (jason’s OP on ideas is right that they matter), but I think the ideas have to be ABOUT energy and atoms and physical plans for those ideas to to turn into something that makes human lives better.
(Image source!) In practice, right now: oil and coal are our primary sources. For Earth right now, solar is still negligible, but if eventually we have asteroid minining and space solar arrays, I’d expect (and hope!) that that stuff would become the dominating term in the energy budget.
The idea of just “putting an end to all that fossil fuel stuff” in the near future seems either confused or evil to me. EITHER people proposing that might be UNAWARE of the entailment in terms of human misery of halting this stuff without having something better ready to go, OR ELSE they might be AWARE of the consequences and misanthropically delighted with the idea of fewer humans doing fewer things?
I’m pro-human. Hence I’m pro-energy.
I think climate change might be an “elephant in the room” when it comes to energy policy?
But I’m also in favor of weather and climate control if we can get those too… Like my answer is “optimism” and “moar engineering!” to basically everything.
Controlling the climate will take MORE resources to accomplish, not less! If, for example, humans are going to reverse the desertification of the Sahara, and use the new forests as carbon sinks, that will be a HUGE project that involves moving around a LOT of dirt and water and seeds and chemistry and so on. I’m not precisely sure that fixing the Sahara would be the specific best use of resources, but I do think that whatever the right ideas are, they have to be ideas about resources and atoms and physical reality.
I’m friendly to basically everything you’ve said, gjm ;-)
Once we are thinking in terms of collecting certain kinds of important resources now versus saving those important resources for some time in the deeper future…
...we’re already working with the core premise: that there ARE important resources (and energy is one of the most important).
Details about early or late usage of this or that resource are (relatively speaking) details.
Oil and coal are not things I’m not particularly in love with. Thorium might be better, I think? The sun seems likely to be around for a LONG time and solar panels in space seems like an idea with a LOT of room to expand!
There has to be “ideas” here (jason’s OP on ideas is right that they matter), but I think the ideas have to be ABOUT energy and atoms and physical plans for those ideas to to turn into something that makes human lives better.
(Image source!) In practice, right now: oil and coal are our primary sources. For Earth right now, solar is still negligible, but if eventually we have asteroid minining and space solar arrays, I’d expect (and hope!) that that stuff would become the dominating term in the energy budget.
The idea of just “putting an end to all that fossil fuel stuff” in the near future seems either confused or evil to me. EITHER people proposing that might be UNAWARE of the entailment in terms of human misery of halting this stuff without having something better ready to go, OR ELSE they might be AWARE of the consequences and misanthropically delighted with the idea of fewer humans doing fewer things?
I’m pro-human. Hence I’m pro-energy.
I think climate change might be an “elephant in the room” when it comes to energy policy?
But I’m also in favor of weather and climate control if we can get those too… Like my answer is “optimism” and “moar engineering!” to basically everything.
Controlling the climate will take MORE resources to accomplish, not less! If, for example, humans are going to reverse the desertification of the Sahara, and use the new forests as carbon sinks, that will be a HUGE project that involves moving around a LOT of dirt and water and seeds and chemistry and so on. I’m not precisely sure that fixing the Sahara would be the specific best use of resources, but I do think that whatever the right ideas are, they have to be ideas about resources and atoms and physical reality.