At 12:00 PM 5/14/2008, Kevin B. O'Brien wrote: snip
>Now, do we conclude from this that there are *no* limits to growth? >I think not. Just because the Club of Rome had a flawed analysis >does not mean that there are no limits. What does the analysis look >like if we say that resources will never completely run out, but >will instead become progressively more expensive? If the price of food depends tightly on energy (and it does) then the effect is that one heck of a lot of people die. http://www.drmillslmu.com/peakoil.htm I strongly recommend this web site, it is the only one I have seen that takes into account the big picture of the race between the singularity and population collapse. Depending on the assumptions, the population could decline from 7.5 peak to 1.8 or even 1 billion people by 2100. North America and Europe would not see as drastic a reduction, but you would expect them to lose half their populations. >Does paying $10/gallon for gas look a lot better than running out? >How about $20/gallon? At what prices is gas effectively unobtainable >to most people? Milk, you might note, has been about the same price as gasoline all my life. We are starting to see food riots. It isn't just gasoline that's going to be hit by high energy costs. >Further, as I have argued, there is a growing crisis over water >supplies. This is a renewable resource, of course. but there are >serious issues about the rate of use relative to the rate of replenishment. That's an easy to solve problem from an engineering standpoint *if* you have really low cost energy. Put reverse osmotic membranes deep in the ocean where the pressure is high enough to force fresh water through them. If you go really deep you can get the difference in density to power part of the process. There is plenty of energy around if we can figure out how to get it. For example, a solar power satellite repays the energy needed to lift it to GEO in about a day (at 100% efficiency). Five percent efficient rockets would replay the lift energy in 3 weeks. In this case the scale works in our favor. Either offer the possibility of penny a kWh electricity and dollar a gallon synthetic gasoline. Unfortunately I think resource wars (like Iraq), famines and epidemics are more likely. Keith _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
