tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6644358391468331871.post6371015493089855090..comments2023-12-28T01:30:22.548-05:00Comments on Giving Gladly: The sweet spotUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6644358391468331871.post-71756410822791941132012-05-31T19:49:10.466-04:002012-05-31T19:49:10.466-04:00One thing that worries me is that we are not tryin...One thing that worries me is that we are not trying seriously to scale up nuclear or renewables. While we were in the process of trying seriously, many people would suffer and die because their farming and weather were screwed up. That's already happening.<br /><br />Soil depletion is another thing that worries me. Current agriculture is possible because of petrochemicals. As we use more water, we're irrigating land with somewhat saline water, which builds up and eventually salts the earth into uselessness. (More use of water is a first-world pattern, both due to stupid city locations like the US Southwest and due to growing more plant crops to feed to animals to produce more meat.)<br /><br />As first-world food patterns spread across the world, more factory-farmed animals with high doses of antibiotics mean more risk of antibiotic-resistant pandemics.<br /><br />"Sustainable Energy Without The Hot Air" is a book that I haven't read, but have been meaning to. It's available free online and is supposed to be well done. The author goes through the physics on what types of renewable energy sources would be practical to what degrees, and ends mostly in favor of nuclear.Julia https://www.blogger.com/profile/12049039706925687485noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6644358391468331871.post-91283170515467108092012-05-31T10:35:48.620-04:002012-05-31T10:35:48.620-04:00What resource would plausibly run out, if we all l...What resource would plausibly run out, if we all lived like typical Americans? To me it seems like we have more than enough space, unless we need it to grow food; we'll have more than enough food, unless we don't have enough energy to make it. So it looks like energy is the main contender for a bottleneck (or waste heat, if we scaled up the population a really huge amount), and though I'm no expert, I would quite confidently predict that either nuclear power or solar power could be comfortably scaled up far enough, if we tried seriously for a while. <br /><br />That said, in addition to not being an expert I don't really know what domain experts say on this question, and I'd be interested to see one justifying or at least expressing the necessary degree of pessimism about the long-run prospects for sustainable energy.Paul Christianohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09161849602388308455noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6644358391468331871.post-1173149885288489472012-05-30T18:48:19.494-04:002012-05-30T18:48:19.494-04:00It's really unclear to me what to expect in te...It's really unclear to me what to expect in terms of natural resources/climate, since I hear experts saying different things. I'm not swayed by people who want to apply Moore's law to everything and assume everything we want will definitely get better and cheaper.<br /><br />I agree that tech will help us have better quality lives at a low economic and environmental costs. Looking closer at the photo, I'm pretty sure the girl was playing with a cell phone while the boys were playing with boards.Julia https://www.blogger.com/profile/12049039706925687485noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6644358391468331871.post-39355555849994563132012-05-30T18:38:34.225-04:002012-05-30T18:38:34.225-04:00It looks to me like there are plenty of natural re...It looks to me like there are plenty of natural resources for 7 billion people to live much more extravagantly than American adults do today, given predictable technological progress. I'd predict (and endorse) massive population growth in the long run, though, and so I buy that point for very different reasons. <br /><br />I also buy the claim "you don't need much to be happy," but again for different reasons. A rapidly increasing share of many people's experiences are online, the goods they consume costing next to nothing on the margin. I expect future people (barring disruptive change) will use resources for as much computing/communication/etc. as they want, and may shuffle around some money in exchange for rights to intellectual property, but will be happy without consuming much more than the bare minimum necessary to support life (hopefully because they actually have materially better lives, not just because they can be happy with less). <br /><br />I think I may have a very different view than you, though, both about what will happen and what should.Paul Christianohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09161849602388308455noreply@blogger.com