[ExI] How Electricity Became a Luxury Good

[spike]

From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
[mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Omar Rahman
.


...

>.Green energy will be expensive, it will not be green, but we will employ
it
anyway, because we will gradually run out of alternatives, and yes we need
energy, lots of it.

spike

 

>.The oil industry began on land where the oil was literally seeping out of
the ground and ever since then the EROEI has been going up. If we factor in
the costs of the wars to maintain control of various oil patches the cost of
oil is really quite high.

 

>.I've written more but I'll try to match Spike's bravery: regardless of
where you are on the political spectrum, can you find anything in my
previous sentences which you would dispute?  Omar

 

Actually, perhaps you intended to say EROEI has been going down steadily,
but we know what you meant.

 

Regarding Keith's notion of SBSP, that would be great if we can make it
happen.  The Chinese might do it.  We have demonstrated control of lasers to
shoot down drones:

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/04/09/video-new-navy-
laser-can-shoot-down-drones-is-headed-for-the-persian-gulf/

 

Note that the laser was aboard a ship, so it had to deal with the control
problem of holding the laser on a target with more precision than required
for laser propulsion, and simultaneously deal with a rolling ship.  The
power is not a show stopper, since we can replicate a laser like the one in
the video arbitrarily many times.  So we have the control algorithms and the
power.  The question to me is whether mankind will go ahead and do it.

 

Getting the power to the ground is a problem, but we know how to do it.
Again the question is: Will we?  

 

There is a good possibility we will not start on it until it is too late.

 

spike

 

 

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