[ExI] Bosch exits Solar business in Germany

[Eugen Leitl]

On Thu, Mar 28, 2013 at 08:30:49AM -0700, spike wrote:

> 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

There are of course ways to do so, but they require technology.

0.1 gigamonkeys is roughly hunter-gatherer level. To get there,
you probably pass through the valley of shadow, aka entire plutonium
and lithium deuteride world wide made airborne. So these
0.1 gigamonkeys will be the rebounded population, after
the population bottleneck. After a great long while.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=so8NQficzZg

> 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.  

I agree that coasts are great, especially in an energy-poor future.
 
> 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.

Indeed. That would be the worst case scanario, especially us here, 
who expected the best for humanity.
 
> 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.

Coasts are natural locations for seawater desalination.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-01/california-desalination-financing-closes-on-1-billion-project.html

If graphene membranes can be made to work desalination will be even 
low-energy. Don't ask me about the pumps and the pipelines, though, that
looks expensive. Inland transport will be hence limited. Capture
from air only gives you very little, and makes it even harder for
folks downwind.