Tony Seba - Disruptive Tech - Synthesis of Solar, Storage, EVs & AEVs

[gerontocrat]

Before overbuilding we should build to 100%, to start with. I am not aware of places (at least there aren't many of them) where solar + wind electricity production exceeds total consumption.

I believe there have been very brief periods in Germany when wind power drove electricity prices to less than zero.

[kassy]

Before overbuilding we should build to 100%, to start with. I am not aware of places (at least there aren't many of them) where solar + wind electricity production exceeds total consumption.

You automatically overbuild if you concentrate the renewable sources. Now we are adding them more or less randomly. The point is to test battery types to catch this energy for winter. If you put solar on all roofs in a town then you can come quite a way depending on locations. Add some other local sources (near solar and wind) to reliably capture energy for winter. The main idea is to find out what works at a relatively low cost. Any local energy solution which works year round lessons the burden of the overall grid.

The initial test bed would be smaller cities with no big industry and the thing we want to work out is how far into winter that would take you.

It is always simpler to build 100% somewhere then to build it everywhere so the idea is to do that in some spots and test different technologies there. Or to phrase it in a different way how can we safe enough energy locally om sunny days to cover the shortfall in winter?

It is an important question to figure out. 

[kassy]

Shortened thread title a bit so it does not make breaks in the recent thread list.

[etienne]

The food disruption like presented is quite scaring. I see many problems :

• yeast to produce protein has to be fed, probably with sugar. That sugar will probably come from corn (the Pepsi/Coke example gives the suggestion that corn would produce the cheaper sugar), so we would become extremely dependent of a few plants to produce almost all our food.
• cows, sheep... are not grazing in the best fields. Sheep and goats are also used for landscape maintenance. What will happen with this ? Everything back to forest could be a good news.
• industry is efficient, but also very sensitive to contamination and not very respectful of life beings. No more meat industry, just people working like Bruce would be a good news, but are we sure that yeast won't be contaminated. There is no way back, just like we couldn't go back to horseback riding to go to work because the infrastructure doesn't exist anymore and distances are too long.
• we will be able to have similar products, but what about holistic, I'm sure that the whole is better that the parts. Maybe we will find out that minor components were healthy or at least useful.

And it would be so easy to just get a more vegetarian diet.

[Bruce Steele]

If protein gets cheap enough we will be feeding our livestock with synthetic protein. Protein is currently one of the most expensive parts of feeding livestock. Soybeans or peas are currently used for hogs and alfalfa for ruminates.
 Beyond beef burgers are available in lots of burger joints , still more expensive than regular beef burgers. Not disrupting anything until it gets cheaper than existing options. Been around several years and hardly disruptive. I have tasted beyond beef and I was less than impressed, going to need to actually taste better than beef or cost much less to disrupt anything.
 My markets are mostly very high end. The rich can afford whatever they like to eat and there is still a lot of romantic notions about supporting local small farmers. People actually like to see small farms , green fields and livestock .  People really like to come visit the farm and try very hard to keep us in business even if local pork is pricey.
 The food system needs redundancy to be dependable. The only way for the artificial food movement to take off is to displace all of us small farmers getting by with very small profit margins. As soon as they can actually get rid of us the fake food industry will consolidate and charge whatever they feel like charging just like the current gas/ diesel model.
 I don’t farm to make a bunch of money, I farm in an effort at self sufficiency . I bought solar/ batteries to control my energy costs without worrying about future inflation. I farm because I am a romantic like many of my customers and I try to feed my wife and I on what we raise or grow.
 I don’t believe in a future where we run to Mars, or eat all synthetic foods, or eat crops grown in warehouse of LED lights, or have unlimited energy to run everything. I believe in a future where things break we can’t fix, I believe those who do live will live in a world with less carrying capacity than the one we live in due to soil loss, groundwater depletion, forest losses, hypoxic ocean expansion, and depletion of all fossil fuel resources. Those of us who manage to inhabit the future world I envision will live much like our great grandparents. We will raise small gardens, chickens and maybe a pig or two. We will live in warm areas of the planet where winter heating isn’t necessary. Cities will not be able to feed themselves and eventually the rich will join us…with calloused  hands or die hanging on abandoned light poles.
 

[Sigmetnow]

The food disruption like presented is quite scaring. I see many problems :

• yeast to produce protein has to be fed, probably with sugar. That sugar will probably come from corn (the Pepsi/Coke example gives the suggestion that corn would produce the cheaper sugar), so we would become extremely dependent of a few plants to produce almost all our food.

There are other sources; corn is relatively low in sugar.  Any scarcity of corn will increase its price, making other sources increasingly viable:

The sugars that plants produce are stored in the root, leaf, seed, or fruit of the plant. Sugar cane and sugar beets contain higher proportions of sucrose compared to other plants and are therefore harvested to produce sugar for use at home and in food products.

A stalk of the sugar cane plant contains about 14% sugar and sugar beets contain about 19%.

https://sugar.ca/sugar-basics/sources-of-sugar

[Sigmetnow]

I don’t believe in a future where we run to Mars, or eat all synthetic foods, or eat crops grown in warehouse of LED lights, or have unlimited energy to run everything. …

Those of us who manage to inhabit the future world I envision will live much like our great grandparents. We will raise small gardens, chickens and maybe a pig or two. We will live in warm areas of the planet where winter heating isn’t necessary. …

A lovely dream.  Keep it.  But the number of people able to live such an idyllic (to your mind) lifestyle will be even fewer than the number who “run to Mars.”

[Bruce Steele]

Sigmetnow Well we agree on the number of people who the planet will support without crushing everything in  their collective path , the only difference is I would consider less humans a good thing and you would prefer human numbers skyrocketing along with the unlimited imaginary resources that support them. You might think I am talking about idealism. Hardly
 No matter how the resource orgy proceeds there will always be people at the margin scraping by just like a hundred generations before them.  They will be there living like they always have and you can look down from whatever height and either take comfort from it or despise them , up to you.
 I am just saying they will be there when a lot of other fantasies collapse.
 They will be stuck with a planet brutalized by a couple hundred years of grasping at stars, and geometric charts on video screens. Tony is full of it.

[KiwiGriff]

There are other sources; corn is relatively low in sugar.  Any scarcity of corn will increase its price, making other sources increasingly viable:

Grind up corn add acid or enzyme  heat and pressure = Sugar.
The actual “dextrose equivalent” or DE. can be tailored to requirements of the customer.
The American market uses mostly Corn syrup based sugars in manufacturing .You can also use similar processes to make sugar  with any starchy feed stock  from wheat to beets.

Income and fertility

There is generally an inverse correlation between income and the total fertility rate within and between nations. The higher the degree of education and GDP per capita of a human population, subpopulation or social stratum, the fewer children are born in any developed country.
 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility#:~:text=There%20is%20generally%20an%20inverse,born%20in%20any%20developed%20country.
Subsistence farmers breeding beyond the ability of their environs is a major issue for humanity.

   

[NeilT]

Ah, yes, high fructose corn syrup.  The diabetes nightmare as the liver has to process the fructose to be usable whilst the fructose triggers a glucose signal.

Nightmare.

[etienne]

Those of us who manage to inhabit the future world I envision will live much like our great grandparents. We will raise small gardens, chickens and maybe a pig or two. We will live in warm areas of the planet where winter heating isn’t necessary. …

A lovely dream.  Keep it.  But the number of people able to live such an idyllic (to your mind) lifestyle will be even fewer than the number who “run to Mars.”

If you think someone could see this as a dream world, you didn't read the right books. Try the short stories by Guy de Maupassant, Galsan Tschinag... I am scared that it is what we might get, and most people (me included) are unable to grow vegetables.

[Sigmetnow]

Sigmetnow Well we agree on the number of people who the planet will support without crushing everything in  their collective path , the only difference is I would consider less humans a good thing and you would prefer human numbers skyrocketing along with the unlimited imaginary resources that support them. You might think I am talking about idealism. Hardly
 No matter how the resource orgy proceeds there will always be people at the margin scraping by just like a hundred generations before them.  They will be there living like they always have and you can look down from whatever height and either take comfort from it or despise them , up to you.
 I am just saying they will be there when a lot of other fantasies collapse.
 They will be stuck with a planet brutalized by a couple hundred years of grasping at stars, and geometric charts on video screens. Tony is full of it.

Well, we agree on the approximate number who will live at the two fringes.
 
But a relatively tiny area of solar panels [shown below ⬇️ for the world, EU, and Germany] can provide all the energy the world’s population needs to flourish today, and there’s plenty of area and potential for additional solar and wind.  As Tony shows, batteries keep getting cheaper — they’re also becoming less toxic and more recyclable.  Short of planetary destruction, there’s no reason to believe we can’t generate as much or more energy than we need in the future, for a population in the billions.
WHEN planetary destruction occurs (not IF), having a backup civilization on Mars is the only solution to keeping humanity alive — not farms.

In the meantime, nutritious crops grown in warehouses will feed more of those needy people you mention, using less water, fertilizer and surface area than is required by traditional farming, and less dependent on the whims of nature’s temperatures, sun and rain — an absolute necessity, given climate change.  Everyone trying to grow everything they need to survive is not an efficient arrangement.  Markets and trading were developed long before farms.

[KiwiGriff]

We presently rely on digging up long dead shite for energy.
It gets burned once to release the stored energy originally from the sun.
In the renewable world with wind solar and hydro we use solar energy in a more direct form.
The means to do work from  energy are recyclable in both cases.
Fossil fuels are by definition unrecoverable  once used.
The world we need is a circular economy not extract and burn.

How are you going to move millions of consumers towards a low  carbon life style ?



 

[oren]

Bruce:

I don’t believe in a future where we run to Mars, or eat all synthetic foods, or eat crops grown in warehouse of LED lights, or have unlimited energy to run everything. I believe in a future where things break we can’t fix, I believe those who do live will live in a world with less carrying capacity than the one we live in due to soil loss, groundwater depletion, forest losses, hypoxic ocean expansion, and depletion of all fossil fuel resources. Those of us who manage to inhabit the future world I envision will live much like our great grandparents.

Sig:

But a relatively tiny area of solar panels [shown below ⬇️ for the world, EU, and Germany] can provide all the energy the world’s population needs to flourish today, and there’s plenty of area and potential for additional solar and wind.  As Tony shows, batteries keep getting cheaper — they’re also becoming less toxic and more recyclable.  Short of planetary destruction, there’s no reason to believe we can’t generate as much or more energy than we need in the future, for a population in the billions.

I find myself partially agreeing with both, yes we can fix the energy system, but we are not on the path to do it in time. Look at any chart posted in one of the energy threads, while renewables are growing fast fossil fuel use is actually growing. And recall a lot of the world population still lives in energy poverty. And population still grows.
Why is renewable energy not growing fast enough? Perhaps lack of priority, takes time to produce the required resources, system inertia, lack of interconnects, AGW denialism, and more. But the fact is, growth rate is insufficient and high fossil fuels use will remain with us for several decades.
But even if we fix energy eventually, all the other problems will remain, along with the accumulated AGW until the - further exacerbating the problems and reducing carrying capacity.
Mars is irrelevant, dreaming of it does not cause the current issues, and settling a million people there does not fix Earth carrying capacity.
In one sense I am much more pessimistic than both, due to the transition period being too abrupt. When carrying capacity goes down sharply to 1-3 billion, the remaining billions, urbanites who cannot get their food, will not lie down on their beds to die. They will raid the farms, reducing actual population far below the theoretical carrying capacity.
What could bring about a smooth transition and save us and our children from such nightmare scenarios is a sharp slowdown in global childbirth. Better to have unborn billions than billions dying.
In this sense, Tony Seba is doing humanity somewhat of a disservice, giving a sense of security where none should be, thereby encouraging childbirth.

[El Cid]

The world we need is a circular economy not extract and burn.

Circular economy is the only way to go. It is also a pipedream presently. All we do is make more and more garbage and deposit it under the soil from where all the dangerous minerals and microplastics seep back into the soil, poisoning our food and all living things...

[etienne]

Well, I can confirm the numbers regarding the needed surface to power the world.

Wikipedia in French gives around 418 and 595 EJ consumption, which would require about 1% of the sahara desert of PV if the sun was there 24 hours a day. So with a surface similar to 3 Sahara, and efficiency gains, it would be possible.

The only problem is the required energy and materials needed for such an infrastructure, for a full energy transition and for the energy distribution to the end user. I'm not sure we have time and the political motivation for that. Furthermore, around the equator, most countries are not very safe, and if we would want to be fair, we would need 1% more for local consumption.

Added : well, I guess it is only a theoretical possibility, I don't see how we could maintain a half million sqr km of PV.

[NeilT]

I don't see how we could maintain a half million sqr km of PV.

Optimus or equivalent.

[kassy]

Well we will not do it that way, it is just to make a point. If you would put all capacity there you would need too many cables.

In one sense I am much more pessimistic than both, due to the transition period being too abrupt. When carrying capacity goes down sharply to 1-3 billion, the remaining billions, urbanites who cannot get their food, will not lie down on their beds to die. They will raid the farms, reducing actual population far below the theoretical carrying capacity.

I am not sure it is going to be one big drop. In a food crisis countries can decide to keep their food which means less and less exports which means it will be a problem for the net importers. What they still can get will be more expensive so they will get less of it. So i could easily see countries like Egypt going first which then creates more problems (no one want millions of refugees in a food crisis).

In the food and money richer countries the burden will fall on the poor. Now if it looks like you will be starving indefinitely then something will have to change. If people go hungry they get cranky. So we will see that type of violence before the food runs out there.

[NeilT]

Society falls apart much faster than anticipated.

Destroy about a dozen factories and all consumer electronics vanish. Kill the people who know how to operate them and it is worse. Even worse is that these factories produce the components required to build the machines that make their components.

You think the chip crisis is bad, imagine having all the chips you need to make the chips vanish. As our society becomes more and more advanced it becomes more and more fragile.

Do you think that anyone has the prescience to keep at least one set of components for silicon wafer manufacture, resin manufacture and chip fab lithography?  Not a chance, they are too focused on flogging it off for money to reduce the cost of a new fab.

Every single production line uses dozens to hundreds or thousands of microprocessors. Because these things are invisible people take them for granted.

Right down to the Led light bulbs we are all using.

This is where 1m people on Mars, self sustaining, would go a long way to any resurrection of civilisation on Earth after a fall. Because a fully self sustaining civilisation on Mars must contain, in microcosm, every manufacturing facility that already exists on Earth.

People take it for granted, far too much, that if stuff goes wrong, we can just pick up and carry on with a bit of effort.  The advanced body of knowledge, today, exists on computers powered by electricity. Remove the ability to build or replace the computers and remove the power we use even to light microfilm readers and we fall back to the 1800's.  If it takes us more than a generation to recover, with the fight to survive overriding the need to educate and remember what knowledge is where and humanity on Earth could easily descend into total chaos.

Remember those who destroy to gain immediate food and shelter will be the least able to retain what we have and the least likely to see education as critical.

Those with the best skills and knowledge are mainly in the category of the least likely to survive the fall.

It is a no brainer that ever increasing population will generate an ever increasing mob potential which will assure the fall.

Egypt was mentioned as a candidate to fall into chaos for food insecurity.  Why? We have already seen the Israeli water infrastructure and the work they are doing with it to generate food and other agriculture. Egypt could easily move to Solar for desalination and build the water infrastructure to make the desert bloom. Do they? No they don't.

This is where the problems lie. They could be fixed but the government's have other priorities.

Meanwhile populations continue to soar and only our technology keeps them alive.  When we breach the limit of that technology, those who need it most to survive will be the first destroy it, by seeing it as a badge of those who "have", never realising that it is the only reason they are alive.

[oren]

You think the chip crisis is bad, imagine having all the chips you need to make the chips vanish. As our society becomes more and more advanced it becomes more and more fragile.

Do you think that anyone has the prescience to keep at least one set of components for silicon wafer manufacture, resin manufacture and chip fab lithography?  Not a chance, they are too focused on flogging it off for money to reduce the cost of a new fab.

This is where 1m people on Mars, self sustaining, would go a long way to any resurrection of civilisation on Earth after a fall. Because a fully self sustaining civilisation on Mars must contain, in microcosm, every manufacturing facility that already exists on Earth.

There is some kind of circular logic here.
It is supposedly very expensive to have a full backup, which is why no one has the prescience to do so. But on Mars it is supposedly doable, just because.
If this is doable on Mars, surely it is more doable in say, New Zealand? Let's build a fully self sustaining civilization in a chosen location on Earth, and save the cost of rockets, radiation shielding, oxygen and all that stuff.
In reality, Mars will not be fully self sustaining, and everything there will cost much more than here. So it really can't be a solution to anything, except for the single issue of humanity surviving a planet level event, say nuclear war or crazy pandemic. And even then, most odds are the event will exported to Mars as well.

[NeilT]

On Mars, to be self sustaining it is Mandatory.  Here on Earth it is economics so nobody will do it. Ever.

See the difference?

[oren]

On Mars it is mandatory only after Earth civ is gone.
Do you expect that nothing whatsoever will be imported from Earth? I'll keep my doubts.

[Sigmetnow]

On Mars it is mandatory only after Earth civ is gone.
Do you expect that nothing whatsoever will be imported from Earth? I'll keep my doubts.

The oft-quoted definition of a sustainable civilization on Mars is one where, if all supplies from Earth were cut off, for whatever reason — global recession, giant asteroid, World War 3  — the Mars colony can survive on its own.  That is its objective.

[Bruce Steele]

Titled “why I fight “
The planet has to survive this thing we call progress( civilization ) for any long term survival of even small bands of Neolithic hunter gatherers. I am kinda feisty because I just spent a couple days in an ocean acidification / hypoxia meeting. A few bullet points from my rather beat up brain
 1. The southern end of anchovy on the West Coast will shift from southern Baja to somewhere north of San Francisco within 80 years. The breeding colonies of many  pinniped and seabirds will IMO disappear in the range of that contraction of habit for forage. So a 1200 mile contraction in forage range from the south moving north due to hypoxia/ ocean warming and respiratory demands of a very important forage fish.
 2. Dungeness Crab dieoffs due to upwelling pulling hypoxic/ low pH waters onto the shelf . This problem will proceed from north moving south. So in essence all the West Coast between Washington and the tip of Baja is being squeezed by hypoxia driven by ocean warming in the south and upwelling in the North.
 Most people don’t have the slightest idea this is happening. Yet I think it is inevitable and I am not alone. The ocean will most certainly continue to warm and oxygen content drops as it heats, inevitable.
The intermediate waters that have been accumulating carbon from the last forty years will be more hypoxic and more undersaturated ( calcium carbonate dissolves) and they will be delivered onto the shelf. Inevitable And what was a vibrant ecosystem that could support many thousands of human hunter gatherers is diminished .
 I am just focusing on a every important habitat for lots of different life forms being crushed as an artifact of civilization and civilization couldn’t care less and at this point can’t stop. Every eastern upwelling current on the planet is facing the same issues whether they realize it yet or not. BTW eastern boundary upwelling currents supply the majority of all human caught fish. And for me that’s what civilization delivers.
 So what is better, a world with very few humans but long term hope for mending the two hundred year gash humans ripped in the carbon cycle or continuing on in the hope technology can deliver a fix.
Kassy has some idea about what I am talking about but it must seem utter madness to most people .
 So I propose human numbers will drop to very low numbers but somehow there will be pockets of habitat that can support hunter gatherers. I would like to know how to inform their best chances of survival .  I don’t know if anything we call civilization should be preserved. Civilization to me is that which supports cities.
 Once upon a time I desired something like enlightenment, and for me looking long into the carbon cycle has delivered a spark of it. How life works but a little knowledge is not everything and sad too and hard to carry. We will need to figure out how to deal with loss and somehow take responsibility for what we have done while not totally crushing the joys of a simpler  life.
 

[Sigmetnow]

Beyond beef burgers are available in lots of burger joints , still more expensive than regular beef burgers. Not disrupting anything until it gets cheaper than existing options. Been around several years and hardly disruptive. I have tasted beyond beef and I was less than impressed, going to need to actually taste better than beef or cost much less to disrupt anything.
…
Cities will not be able to feed themselves and eventually the rich will join us…with calloused  hands or die hanging on abandoned light poles. 

So what is better, a world with very few humans but long term hope for mending the two hundred year gash humans ripped in the carbon cycle or continuing on in the hope technology can deliver a fix.
…
We will need to figure out how to deal with loss and somehow take responsibility for what we have done while not totally crushing the joys of a simpler  life.

Please define “simpler.”
I know a guy who raises animals.  He has a big fossil-fuel-powered truck, because he says he needs it to transport his animals for slaughter.  He has a solar and battery system that powers most everything, including home air conditioning, because his farm is in an area at risk for heatwaves, drought, and wildfires.
Is this “simple”?

Bruce,  I have NO problem with what you do.  You work hard to lovingly produce a boutique meat product appreciated by those locals who can afford it and who still eat meat.  But the less affluent, and those who do not eat meat, may find the Beyond Burger just as enjoyable.  Why are their preferences and desires to be meat-free less deserving of attention?  And trashing the non-farming rich is, well, pretty rich, considering they are the customers providing income for your chosen lifestyle.

You enjoy technology — you are using it right now — yet billions of other people who with the help of technology could live better and be less of a burden to the planet should just die off because you don’t like the taste of Beyond Burgers?

 
We both agree that the earth’s ecosystem is in dire straits, changing what was, and that humanity will be changed due to it.
So the choice is to do nothing, stay “simple” and just watch as billions of people die along with much of the ecosystem — or we can work hard to find new ways to help the planet AND the people.  Tony describes one scenario.  To say the goal is impossible, that those who believe it are crazy dreamers, is “simply” giving up.

[oren]

Sig, I think that was a bit mean. Bruce does not call for these people to die and never said so. However the prediction (right or wrong, who knows) is that die they will.
And sometimes saying the goal is impossible is simply being realistic. An honest and clear eyed assessment of the situation is required in order to steer plans and strategies to deal with problems.
Humanity expects to have 10 billion people on this planet in 3 decades, and that all will be fine. This expectation brings about certain plans and prevents certain others from happening. I expect otherwise, and think plans should change drastically. Does that mean I am giving up? Or that others are living in a rosy dream?

[NeilT]

On Mars it is mandatory only after Earth civ is gone.
Do you expect that nothing whatsoever will be imported from Earth? I'll keep my doubts.

I did say to be self sustaining. Bringing things from Earth is not self sustaining.

[kassy]

Ah technology. The solution to one area then creates problems in another area.

The problem is that you have to use it responsibly and our track record at that is rather bad. Fossil fuels. Great solution at a time. Allows you to build up a lot quick. The reports in 1950 already predicted what would happen if you kept growing the output. Somewhere beyond +1C things would start to go crazy and they were right about that.

We know more since the eighties, we know even more in the nineties and our knowledge builds but while regulating CFCs was relatively easy oil and gas is too tied into money politics and power.

Farming has been pushed into high tech too. Some solutions are helpful but many others are not.
They are also not sustainable.

We lose top soil, we have excess fertilizer run of into streams into the oceans. The poisons we spray to kill bugs on the monoculture are so good they also kill deep soil live. Yeah great use of tech.

There is a completely different way to do things but that would mean less money for big food, big chemicals and buddy big medicine. Since they are linked to the governments that won´t happen.

A big aspect in relation to AGW is how much time we have until something really bad happens. A multi bread basket failure would count. Things are not looking good for California. One can only drill so far. Add to that the article about a possible China collapse which Vox Mundi posted recently (above the lawn discussion in Water wars). Together that could seriously disrupt our world.

Anyway we are really bad at using technology in a proper way so adding techs is not really going to help if we keep making the same mistakes. Of course the main mistake is keeping to push the climate because every bit we add increases all the problems.

We cannot keep farming as we do because that alone will blow us through the carbon budget.

PS: There is also an argument about the joys of a simpler life but i will add that tomorrow.

[Bruce Steele]

Sigmetnow, I am very aware that I am living in the modern world and I am somewhat dependent on the very people , if they are rich, causing the most problems with regards to resource extraction. We all are in that top ten percent however so very hard to avoid anywhere in the US. . I am not poor but kinda like most farmers ,land rich and income moderate to low.
  I would argue that most of the transportation/ fuel costs I incur are an artifact of USDA rules that are purportedly designed for food safety but effectively a disincentive to small farm producers whether they be crops or livestock. Scale means costs for  the required USDA inspector required for slaughter  is per animal far less for huge operations than small ones. Scale applies to feed costs and transportation and most every other expense as well. I mentioned earlier that redundancy is a good thing in food systems but you can go with the corporate consolidation model if you please. Being totally dependent on someone else producing your food, housing, and clothing is the opposite of self sufficiency.
 When I was referring to simpler I was referring to many of those currently in the lower 90% and also to those in the future forced back into agrarian lifestyles.  Their  existence is very much threatened by the resource extraction of the top ten percent currently living. A hard scrabble life isn’t necessarily a bad thing and most all of our relatives a few generations past lived simpler lives with much smaller carbon footprints. They valued self sufficiency because it meant survival, they valued frugality because it meant they might attain a lifestyle within reach. The older generation lived with their children and I imagine the mentally challenged weren’t kicked to the curb or packed off to state care.
 If I am idealistic it is because I believe a coherent family unit living together off their own land is deeply desired by millions and millions of humans. They are my fellow dreamers, the dream is old. Attempting to run that dream on all electrics is merely  a stopgap but if it helps maintain the seed lines, the heritage livestock, and some of the local knowledge for another generation to begin their work then for me it’s easy to rationalize. But a human with a hoe is still a viable fallback.
 So might I ask if futurists might have a fallback they could live with ?
 

[KiwiGriff]

So might I ask if futurists might have a fallback they could live with ?

Guess i would be one of your futurists.
i live of grid mostly self sufficient on 6 Hectares.
It is not my life style it is the hundreds of millions of consumers you have to change
Not going to happen without force or collapse.
With collapse we are all fucked. Few in the developed world would have the skills needed to survive those that don't will take from those that do .
You will not take Bubas truck or Karans overseas trips without the use of  force.
Using Force would be meet with force. Collapse of civilization is the end result .
The only hope i see is leveraging technology to get out of this conundrum.
 

[Sigmetnow]

The Earth is in crisis!  Humanity’s survival is at stake.
 
Two perspectives:
 
Sigmetnow:  We’re working on it!  Visionaries see a new, positive path forward for the world.
 
Bruce Steele: Billions will die. People like me will be fine, though.

[Bruce Steele]

The earth is in crisis! Civilization is at stake.
Sig, everything is fine we got a new gadget
( people will die along with the habitats that supports them )
Bruce , billions will die but those who maintain some skills at self sufficiency will have a better chance at survival and better support resilient ecosystems.

[etienne]

I would turn the question differently : are we facing a crisis like the Mayas had a long time ago, or are we just re-balancing the power between the active superpowers ? Are we in front of a future collapse, or a situation where the best will win ?
I'd bet on the collapse, but would prefer the other.

[oren]

I'd bet on the collapse, but would prefer the other.

+1

[kassy]

The Earth is in crisis!  Humanity’s survival is at stake.
 
Two perspectives:
 
Sigmetnow:  We’re working on it!  Visionaries see a new, positive path forward for the world.
 
Bruce Steele: Billions will die. People like me will be fine, though.

That is a really simplistic take on it and probably a misunderstanding.
In a severe collapse he would not be fine but that is mostly location.

Yes we are working on it. But given the track record of our technology use we don´t know if it will be here in time or even get used properly. You futurists dream of the most utopian tech future while a dystopian one is more likely seeing how tech is used but this is something for another thread. maybe i will use the Optimus thread for that because that touches a number of issues.

We cannot rely on visionaries if we fail what we need to do now. It increases the damage and makes solving things more complicated.

Because we committed to this push there is a much bigger chance that things will go very wrong at some point.

Thinking about the future is interesting but you can not rely on dreams of the future to brush away the failings of today.

The essence is time and we are running out because we are speeding towards the cliff. The main chance that matters is reducing all fossil fuel use a.s.a.p.

[NeilT]

I'd bet on the collapse, but would prefer the other.

+1

+1 also.

When stuff goes south in the world of humans, humans tend to lash out and attack in mobs.  No thinking just the absolute conviction that they have a "right" to food and other stuffs and they are going to take it.

Of course in the process they kill the people who produce it and after their months or, at worst, a year or two, of rioting and taking, they die.

But in the process they have killed off the very civilisation which gave them their "rights" in the first place.

Then they die.

All this BS about inalienable human rights just makes it worse.  People believe they were somehow born with these rights and that they will not go away no matter what they do.  Stick them in the jungle in a swimsuit for a week and see how many believe in these "inalienable human rights when you come back to pick up what is left.

It is exactly this attitude that will finish the current evolution of mankind, just as it finished Rome.

[vox_mundi]

Can't raise a hundred head of cattle on a quarter-acre

[Sigmetnow]

The Earth is in crisis!  Humanity’s survival is at stake.
 
Two perspectives:
 
Sigmetnow:  We’re working on it!  Visionaries see a new, positive path forward for the world.
 
Bruce Steele: Billions will die. People like me will be fine, though.

That is a really simplistic take on it and probably a misunderstanding.

Not a misunderstanding.  Perspectives. I’m not saying which, if either, of these is more right than the other. (They may both be wrong.)  There are many other perspectives, as well.

In a severe collapse he would not be fine but that is mostly location.

Yes.

[kassy]

Perspectives is one thing but there is a real world out there which responds to basic physics inputs.
It does not care about optimism vs pessimism. It responds to real things like CO2,CH4 and all the other inputs. It does not care that oil and gas companies woefully undercount there emissions because in the real world it is accounted for.

We know what we have to do and we do not do it.

It is similar to the extreme risk scenarios debate. Antarctic bottom melt did turn out to be very important, Greenland is going quicker then last estimate etc.

We do not need visionaries, we need measures.

[Sigmetnow]

Perspectives is one thing but there is a real world out there which responds to basic physics inputs.
It does not care about optimism vs pessimism. It responds to real things like CO2,CH4 and all the other inputs. It does not care that oil and gas companies woefully undercount there emissions because in the real world it is accounted for.

We know what we have to do and we do not do it.

It is similar to the extreme risk scenarios debate. Antarctic bottom melt did turn out to be very important, Greenland is going quicker then last estimate etc.

We do not need visionaries, we need measures.

But people who are turned off by chemistry and data do respond to positive visions — or perceptions, if you will. They don’t buy an EV for the regional miles per gallon emissions equivalent, or because of Antarctic bottom melt.  They buy an EV for the image, the idea of a better way than ICE.  And the reason they buy that EV is not important, but they fact they did it, is.

The visionaries not only see the way forward with overbuilding solar and batteries, like Tony describes.  They develop new strains of food that produce more despite climate change — while existing business tries to keep on selling more of the whatever is making them money, regardless of how wasteful it is.  Visionaries see things that never were and say, “Why Not?”

Solutions don’t just happen. It takes vision, perseverance, hard work and money, and then, if you are lucky, improvements occur that are desired by the masses and are spread widely enough to make a difference.  “Visionaries” don’t just sit around thinking.  They act, or they inspire others to act by illustrating an “impossible” goal that needs to be achieved, which is just as important.  If Elon Musk had not set out on his Secret Master Plan to make the first desirable, expensive EVs which would fund the development of less expensive EVs, there would be no EVs for people to buy today.

[etienne]

Hello Sigmetnow,

We all hope that you are right, but my feeling is that when Tony Seba says that cost curve are like gravity, he is forgetting one important parameter, which is "in a BAU context", and I feel that we don't have a BAU context anymore.

Of course, I'm unable to say if this is only valid for Luxembourg, for Europe, for the OECD or for the world.

Etienne

[oren]

Solutions don’t just happen. It takes vision, perseverance, hard work and money, and then, if you are lucky, improvements occur that are desired by the masses and are spread widely enough to make a difference.

Indeed, Sig, and all of this takes time. Elon's secret master plan was in 2006, it took 15 years to reach the design point and price point for production and sales to take off, and will take another 15 before this makes a serious dent in fossil fuel use. Global mass deployment is a bitch.
But time is the one thing we don't have. So an objective observer can make a good prediction whether the problem will be fixed in time or not, because if the visionary solution is not already commercialized today, it's not gonna be deployed at scale in a relevant timeframe.
By 2040 EVs will be there in time with maybe a 50% global fleet penetration. Renewables will be there in time but probably with less global share. Advanced food growing tech will not be there in time, the replacement cycle takes much longer and the solutions are not ready yet, for most foodstuffs. Each vision needs to be evaluated in this manner.
This doesn't mean stop looking for visionary solutions, it does mean take a cold hard look at the available facts and prepare for less rosy scenarios.

[kassy]

And we still need to stop growing the fossil fuel output. That is what we need to do now and that does not take a visionary. There is no time to wait.

Some feel the urgency more. Maybe because they look at today with a slight horror while others look into the future with rose tinted glasses.

Just the SLR committed to by now will really complicate things for many places in the future and nothing is going to stop that. Same goes for multiple bread basket failures or some of our main rivers becoming too shallow for large cargo freights. 

[Sigmetnow]

Elon's secret master plan was in 2006, it took 15 years to reach the design point and price point for production and sales to take off, and will take another 15 before this makes a serious dent in fossil fuel use. Global mass deployment is a bitch.

But time is the one thing we don't have. So an objective observer can make a good prediction whether the problem will be fixed in time or not, because if the visionary solution is not already commercialized today, it's not gonna be deployed at scale in a relevant timeframe.

By 2040 EVs will be there in time with maybe a 50% global fleet penetration. Renewables will be there in time but probably with less global share. Advanced food growing tech will not be there in time, the replacement cycle takes much longer and the solutions are not ready yet, for most foodstuffs. Each vision needs to be evaluated in this manner.

This doesn't mean stop looking for visionary solutions, it does mean take a cold hard look at the available facts and prepare for less rosy scenarios.

Three words:  Exponential Adoption Curve. 
For years, even the “experts” have plotted the future adoption of solar and EVs using a linear projection. 
Year after year, they are proven wildly wrong.

Optimism is justified!

⬇️ from Tony Seba’s presentation:

[NeilT]

True but in that table of S curves only two are core infrastructure and both of those were initial technology replacing wildly less capable technologies.  For instance telegraph as opposed to telephone and electric light bulbs as opposed to gas lamps. To give just two examples.

The rest of these use cases are consumer.

Granted rooftop solar is consumer, but the real gains are in major infrastructure.  In wind farms only infrastructure exists.

In most of the cases in this chart the product was so compelling that it, quite literally, drove the transition as nobody wanted to be left behind.  In the case of electricity generation that's a bit different.  You only get the huge benefits after having spent huge sums of money.  Even then, unless the FF become extremely expensive (witness new gas infra when the price is escalating dramatically), the use case is harder to define without significant government subsidies to get over the initial spend.

EV vehicles, sure.  Reducing the carbon footprint of the electricity generation?  Companies are making the decision and the overriding benefit is not as dramatic as all these curves.

[oren]

Elon's secret master plan was in 2006, it took 15 years to reach the design point and price point for production and sales to take off, and will take another 15 before this makes a serious dent in fossil fuel use. Global mass deployment is a bitch.

But time is the one thing we don't have. So an objective observer can make a good prediction whether the problem will be fixed in time or not, because if the visionary solution is not already commercialized today, it's not gonna be deployed at scale in a relevant timeframe.

By 2040 EVs will be there in time with maybe a 50% global fleet penetration. Renewables will be there in time but probably with less global share. Advanced food growing tech will not be there in time, the replacement cycle takes much longer and the solutions are not ready yet, for most foodstuffs. Each vision needs to be evaluated in this manner.

This doesn't mean stop looking for visionary solutions, it does mean take a cold hard look at the available facts and prepare for less rosy scenarios.

Three words:  Exponential Adoption Curve. 
For years, even the “experts” have plotted the future adoption of solar and EVs using a linear projection. 
Year after year, they are proven wildly wrong.

Optimism is justified!

⬇️ from Tony Seba’s presentation:

Presentations are nice.
These S-curves, need to look at the details.
Is the penetration here global, or just for the US of A? Because if it's not global it's not really helpful.
What are the barriers to entry for the adoption of each curve? I would think 90% taking up social media, a personal decision with no cost, is less difficult than 90% taking up wind power, a mostly government/corporate decision with high cost and lots of drag in the physical world.
How long did it take to adopt electricity worldwide? That would be a good analogy.
EV adoption rate probably would be similar to cars, assuming electricity exists, which isn't really the case in many places still.
Food growing in buildings, how long will that adoption take? Like social media or cell phones? I think not.

[Sigmetnow]

In the case of electricity generation that's a bit different.  You only get the huge benefits after having spent huge sums of money.

It is now cheaper to install a new solar plant than to continue to operate an existing fossil fuel plant.  That can’t be ignored for much longer.

—-
Tesla sells globally…

[Sigmetnow]

Is the penetration here global, or just for the US of A? Because if it's not global it's not really helpful.

The biggest consumers are the biggest emitters.  Starting with the most affluent will make the biggest impact.

[NeilT]

It is now cheaper to install a new solar plant than to continue to operate an existing fossil fuel plant.  That can’t be ignored for much longer.

An existing fossil fuel plant runs at night.  Necessitating additional solutions.  The Solar/Wind farm in Morocco being cable fed to the UK has only 5 hours of the day, in summer, without full power.

[NeilT]

Until this stops it is all moot anyway.