[ExI] Bosch exits Solar business in Germany

[spike]

>... On Behalf Of Eugen Leitl

>...In absence of cheap, abundant energy the carrying capacity of the local
ecosystem is at about 100 megamonkeys. 

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Assuming that figure is correct for the sake of argument, there is another
perhaps bigger factor at play.  If we fail to find a more energy efficient
means of producing food, that 100Mm must be spread more evenly and thinly
than is optimal for the sorts of things many of us here enjoy.  In the US,
we have population concentration along the coasts, with the vast inland
areas producing most of the food.  Most of the fun stuff happens near the
coasts.  Most of the technological progress and innovation happens near the
coasts.  That's where I want to be.  

Humanity has spent most of its life in technological equilibrium, but we are
in a period of rapid revolutionary change.  Our whole lives and the lives of
every ancestor we knew lived in this transition, so it is difficult to
imagine falling into a new technological equilibrium.  I wouldn't like it a
damn bit.  It is too easy to imagine a future in which we failed to find the
right path, didn't get the right energy infrastructure developed and built
in time, ended up with a spreading and falling population along with
technological retrogression.  Oh dear evolution save us from that, sheesh.

My notion is that we must build the nukes, build the windmills, build the
rooftop PV installations, and get with it on my own favorites, the space
based solar and massive wind and solar powered coal to liquids and coal to
fertilizer operations, located in the American southwestern desert, Mexico,
the Sahara, the Gobi.

spike