The author describes how fossil fuels, while initially beneficial for human progress, have limited availability and will eventually run out.
the world will run out of oil and gas in about 60 years and coal in 100 years. The author emphasizes the need to find alternatives to fossil fuels and not rely solely on their continued availability.
E_nergy and Human Ambition on a Finite Planet_ is a fantastic (and free) textbook.
Fossil fuels are incredibly dense and powerful energy sources. A vial of gasoline the size of a AA battery (7 mL) has enough power to lift a car (1,500 kg) up as high as a house (4 m).
Fossil fuels have fueled a flourishing in human travel, technology, science, leisure, and debauchery. My grandfather took a boat to England, and now my wife is able to fly back and forth enough to see the children. Itâs wonderful. And also temporary.
Historical progress can fool us into thinking that we can expect a continued march to better substitutes.
they take 100s of millions of years to form, and weâre simply using then 100,000 times faster than creatures can ever get dead and buried.
massive inheritance from our ancestors, but that is indubitably running out. And weâll be on our
Itâll be a moment like William S. Burroughs described in his heroin fever dream Naked Lunch. âThe title means exactly what the words say: naked lunch, a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork.â
when it runs out, this whole lifestyle runs out.
If human energy use keeps growingâas it has our entire lifetimesâthe waste heat alone will boil the oceans in 400 years. Regardless of whether itâs renewable or not. Itâs not just fossil fuels.
We canât just keep cruising down the same road in our electric cars.
We simply cannot have the entire global population âdevelopingâ like Americans. It will boil the fucking oceans. As Murphy says:
if all countries on Earth were to live at a first-world standard, it would require an effective human population of 70 billion people.
Imagine if every person in China owned a car, or aspired to own a car, every one of the 1.1 billion people in China. Or that every one of the 800 million people in India wished to own a car â this method, this lifestyle â and that Africa did the same. And that nearly 450 million Latin Americans did the same. How long would oil last? How long would natural gas last? How long would natural resources last? What would be left of the ozone layer? What would be left of oxygen on Earth? What would happen with carbon dioxide?
What we call progress, growth, and prosperity is going up and to the right.
We have grown up on the side of going up, but we will die in the age of coming down. At the end of our lives, our lifestyles
We have grown up on the side of going up, but we will die in the age of coming down. At the end of our lives, our lifestyles will end with us. What goes up must come down. Like good old junkies, we believe that another fix is around the corner.
We have grown up on the side of going up, but we will die in the age of coming down. At the end of our lives, our lifestyles will end with us. What goes up must come down. Like good old junkies, we believe that another fix is around the corner. We think itâs renewables, we think itâs green energy, that if we just unite to stop carbon emissions, we can go on like before.
As math tells us, if we keep using more and more energy to power AI and virtual worlds and blast off to space, weâll boil the oceans even if that energy is renewable. We canât keep growing forever. On a finite planet, itâs just not physically possible.
Tomâs blog is called Do The Math and the math just doesnât work out. The great thing about his textbook is that you can do the math yourself. I mean, I canât, I mostly skip those parts, but itâs a fantastic application of math to real motivating problems. Like the end of the world as we know it.
The answer to the question, can we have endless growth on a finite planet is just no, as much as we try to negotiate the impossible.
Having grown up in an age of perpetual rabbits we believe that new green rabbits will pop out of the hat, but even that leads to the heat death of the Earth if growth continues.
weâre not just running out of fossil fuels, weâre running out of insects, weâre running out of amphibians, weâre running out of countless species, of ecosystems, of water, of habitable earth. We have traded all that which is irreplaceable for what is throw-away
weâre not just running out of fossil fuels, weâre running out of insects, weâre running out of amphibians, weâre running out of countless species, of ecosystems, of water, of habitable earth. We have traded all that which is irreplaceable for what is throw-away, and for this our descendants will suffer. But you know, fuck âem. By the gods it was a flourishing. We flew like gods before crashing back to the earth we scorched.
The author describes how fossil fuels, while initially beneficial for human progress, have limited availability and will eventually run out.
the world will run out of oil and gas in about 60 years and coal in 100 years. The author emphasizes the need to find alternatives to fossil fuels and not rely solely on their continued availability.
E_nergy and Human Ambition on a Finite Planet_ is a fantastic (and free) textbook.
Fossil fuels are incredibly dense and powerful energy sources. A vial of gasoline the size of a AA battery (7 mL) has enough power to lift a car (1,500 kg) up as high as a house (4 m).
Fossil fuels have fueled a flourishing in human travel, technology, science, leisure, and debauchery. My grandfather took a boat to England, and now my wife is able to fly back and forth enough to see the children. Itâs wonderful. And also temporary.
Historical progress can fool us into thinking that we can expect a continued march to better substitutes.
they take 100s of millions of years to form, and weâre simply using then 100,000 times faster than creatures can ever get dead and buried.
massive inheritance from our ancestors, but that is indubitably running out. And weâll be on our
Itâll be a moment like William S. Burroughs described in his heroin fever dream Naked Lunch. âThe title means exactly what the words say: naked lunch, a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork.â
when it runs out, this whole lifestyle runs out.
If human energy use keeps growingâas it has our entire lifetimesâthe waste heat alone will boil the oceans in 400 years. Regardless of whether itâs renewable or not. Itâs not just fossil fuels.
We canât just keep cruising down the same road in our electric cars.
We simply cannot have the entire global population âdevelopingâ like Americans. It will boil the fucking oceans. As Murphy says:
if all countries on Earth were to live at a first-world standard, it would require an effective human population of 70 billion people.
Imagine if every person in China owned a car, or aspired to own a car, every one of the 1.1 billion people in China. Or that every one of the 800 million people in India wished to own a car â this method, this lifestyle â and that Africa did the same. And that nearly 450 million Latin Americans did the same. How long would oil last? How long would natural gas last? How long would natural resources last? What would be left of the ozone layer? What would be left of oxygen on Earth? What would happen with carbon dioxide?
What we call progress, growth, and prosperity is going up and to the right.
We have grown up on the side of going up, but we will die in the age of coming down. At the end of our lives, our lifestyles
We have grown up on the side of going up, but we will die in the age of coming down. At the end of our lives, our lifestyles will end with us. What goes up must come down. Like good old junkies, we believe that another fix is around the corner.
We have grown up on the side of going up, but we will die in the age of coming down. At the end of our lives, our lifestyles will end with us. What goes up must come down. Like good old junkies, we believe that another fix is around the corner. We think itâs renewables, we think itâs green energy, that if we just unite to stop carbon emissions, we can go on like before.
As math tells us, if we keep using more and more energy to power AI and virtual worlds and blast off to space, weâll boil the oceans even if that energy is renewable. We canât keep growing forever. On a finite planet, itâs just not physically possible.
Tomâs blog is called Do The Math and the math just doesnât work out. The great thing about his textbook is that you can do the math yourself. I mean, I canât, I mostly skip those parts, but itâs a fantastic application of math to real motivating problems. Like the end of the world as we know it.
The answer to the question, can we have endless growth on a finite planet is just no, as much as we try to negotiate the impossible.
Having grown up in an age of perpetual rabbits we believe that new green rabbits will pop out of the hat, but even that leads to the heat death of the Earth if growth continues.
weâre not just running out of fossil fuels, weâre running out of insects, weâre running out of amphibians, weâre running out of countless species, of ecosystems, of water, of habitable earth. We have traded all that which is irreplaceable for what is throw-away
weâre not just running out of fossil fuels, weâre running out of insects, weâre running out of amphibians, weâre running out of countless species, of ecosystems, of water, of habitable earth. We have traded all that which is irreplaceable for what is throw-away, and for this our descendants will suffer. But you know, fuck âem. By the gods it was a flourishing. We flew like gods before crashing back to the earth we scorched.
