[ExI] Michio Kaku makes 3 predictions about the future

spike at rainier66.com spike at rainier66.com
Sun Mar 27 14:50:11 UTC 2022


 

 

From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat
Sent: Sunday, 27 March, 2022 6:19 AM
To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Cc: William Flynn Wallace <foozler83 at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [ExI] Michio Kaku makes 3 predictions about the future

 

Billw, something for you to ponder until then: coal currently generates about 20% of the power in the USA.  If we phase that out, what do we replace it with?  And if we manage that, how do we generate all the power needed to charge the Teslas?

 

spike         Spike, you know very well what the answer is:  nuclear.  People die every day from polluted air mostly generated by coal plants, such as in Western Carolina.  Oh, if people were only rational!  They are afraid of nuclear and used to coal and it ought to be the reverse.  bill w

 

Hi Billw,

I am, and have long been an advocate of nuclear power.  But environmentalists stop it in places where they are able, such as everywhere in the USA and generally in Europe.

The enormous solar colony I envision is bootstrapped using energy generated by nuclear reactors in West Sahara, cooled by seawater.  The whole operation would be owned and operated by the Chinese, who pay no attention to environmentalists and don’t get too concerned about international pressure.  They have developing nation status, which means they get to do whatever they want, regardless of how rich they become.  It is unclear when a developing nation becomes a no-longer developing nation.  It is unclear why the USA can be considered non-developing.  Any ideas?

These big West Sahara schemes do come with an environmental price, as BillK pointed out.  This I do not dispute, nor do I dispute that enormous solar factories will contribute to global warming.  I do wish for us to recognize however that global warming in itself need not be catastrophic.  We can tolerate some of it.

Example: solar panels reduce the albedo of the planet, so it creates a hot spot above the panels.  But if the solar collection is done near the equator, fewer panels are needed.  The air above the panels is already hot, and it gets hotter, but it isn’t exactly a breakeven deal because of Stefan-Boltzmann’s law: a black body radiates energy as a function of its temperature raised to the 4th.  Superheated air radiates heat out into space.  

If we compare two air masses heated from their initial state 20 kelvin, one air mass starting at 273K and the other starting at a Sahara-ey 335K, the already hot desert air radiates 70% more energy.  Ja we know air isn’t a black body and half of that radiated energy goes back down, ja we know.  But the Stefan-Boltzmann law comes to our aid with the superheated air problem.  

At some point we must recognize that all forms of energy conversion have environmental cost and we must pay, for we cannot do without energy.  Nuclear is the cleanest, but environmentalists want it elsewhere.  If elsewhere, the energy generated elsewhere must be transported.  If it is transported, the process is material intensive, which has its own environmental costs.  Electric wires cannot be effectively defended in many parts of the world, which is why much of Africa is still not universally electrified.  But liquid fuels can be transported and is well-suited to local use where people are far too sophisticated to contribute to global warming in their own neighborhood.  They insist on contributing to global warming elsewhere, where they cannot see it.

OK then.  We can play that game, and make a ton of money at the same time.  There is no need to protest the game really, for humanity needs energy, so we must play the energy game and we must deal with the consequences.  From what I can see, the Chinese are in the best place to do that, because they do things like that: buy African territory, defend the hell out of it and build mega-projects on the area they bought.  India also has developing nation status and also has long-range vision.

spike

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