A Theory of (Almost) Everything - IEEE Spectrum

[Jochen Fromm-5]

Interesting IEEE podcast: an interview with Václav Smil, who wrote a book about "Grand Transitions", similar to "The Major Transitions in Evolution" from John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry 

https://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/geek-life/history/a-theory-of-almost-everything

-J.

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[Merle Lefkoff-2]

Almost, but not quite, Jochen.  He doesn't know about embodied energy.  A motor car has an embodied energy contents of 20 800k kWh, while an electric car's embodied energy amounts to 34 700 kWh.  Perhaps if he knew this he wouldn't be so optimistic.  We are racing toward our doom.

On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 10:06 AM Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Interesting IEEE podcast: an interview with Václav Smil, who wrote a book about "Grand Transitions", similar to "The Major Transitions in Evolution" from John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry 

https://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/geek-life/history/a-theory-of-almost-everything

-J.

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[thompnickson2]

Merle, and all,

 

A naïve question:  Do we have an energy supply problem or do we have an energy distribution problem?   For starters, let there be a solar collector on the roof of every house in santa fe, roughly the area of the roof (roofly the area of the rough?) .  Assuming energy were entirely miscible, what proportion of the total energy needs (except food, of course) of Santa Feans would that generate.  I assume hundreds of percents, right? 

 

N

 

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 10:51 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A Theory of (Almost) Everything - IEEE Spectrum

 

Almost, but not quite, Jochen.  He doesn't know about embodied energy.  A motor car has an embodied energy contents of 20 800k kWh, while an electric car's embodied energy amounts to 34 700 kWh.  Perhaps if he knew this he wouldn't be so optimistic.  We are racing toward our doom.

 

On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 10:06 AM Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Interesting IEEE podcast: an interview with Václav Smil, who wrote a book about "Grand Transitions", similar to "The Major Transitions in Evolution" from John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry 

https://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/geek-life/history/a-theory-of-almost-everything

 

-J.

 

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--

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @merle110

 

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[Marcus G. Daniels]

Let’s see, if I go to www.fueleconomy.gov it says a Tesla model 3 is 24 kWh/100 mi.   That’s about 66 miles round trip from Santa Fe to Los Alamos.  

So I get 20,592 kWh of energy use for 5 days of driving a week for 5 years.   Then the battery would likely get converted into battery storage for solar. 

Also the energy that goes into manufacturing batteries will steadily improve as technology improves.   kWh is not a great metric either for impact on the planet.   

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 9:51 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A Theory of (Almost) Everything - IEEE Spectrum

 

Almost, but not quite, Jochen.  He doesn't know about embodied energy.  A motor car has an embodied energy contents of 20 800k kWh, while an electric car's embodied energy amounts to 34 700 kWh.  Perhaps if he knew this he wouldn't be so optimistic.  We are racing toward our doom.

 

On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 10:06 AM Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Interesting IEEE podcast: an interview with Václav Smil, who wrote a book about "Grand Transitions", similar to "The Major Transitions in Evolution" from John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry 

https://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/geek-life/history/a-theory-of-almost-everything

 

-J.

 

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--

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @merle110

 

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[Merle Lefkoff-2]

Nick, I think we have an energy supply problem.  We don't have enough stuff left in the ground to dig up to supply our technology much longer at a price anyone can afford.  I have a colleague who has calculated that we will run out of copper in three years, as just one example.  My understanding is that copper wire conducts most of our electricity.   

On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 11:17 AM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Merle, and all,

 

A naïve question:  Do we have an energy supply problem or do we have an energy distribution problem?   For starters, let there be a solar collector on the roof of every house in santa fe, roughly the area of the roof (roofly the area of the rough?) .  Assuming energy were entirely miscible, what proportion of the total energy needs (except food, of course) of Santa Feans would that generate.  I assume hundreds of percents, right? 

 

N

 

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 10:51 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A Theory of (Almost) Everything - IEEE Spectrum

 

Almost, but not quite, Jochen.  He doesn't know about embodied energy.  A motor car has an embodied energy contents of 20 800k kWh, while an electric car's embodied energy amounts to 34 700 kWh.  Perhaps if he knew this he wouldn't be so optimistic.  We are racing toward our doom.

 

On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 10:06 AM Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Interesting IEEE podcast: an interview with Václav Smil, who wrote a book about "Grand Transitions", similar to "The Major Transitions in Evolution" from John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry 

https://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/geek-life/history/a-theory-of-almost-everything

 

-J.

 

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--

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @merle110

 

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--

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @merle110

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[Pieter Steenekamp]

Yeah, just like we were seriously running out of stuff in 1980
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon%E2%80%93Ehrlich_wager
But of course, it's different this time around

On Thu, 15 Apr 2021 at 19:41, Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]> wrote:

Nick, I think we have an energy supply problem.  We don't have enough stuff left in the ground to dig up to supply our technology much longer at a price anyone can afford.  I have a colleague who has calculated that we will run out of copper in three years, as just one example.  My understanding is that copper wire conducts most of our electricity.   

On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 11:17 AM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Merle, and all,

 

A naïve question:  Do we have an energy supply problem or do we have an energy distribution problem?   For starters, let there be a solar collector on the roof of every house in santa fe, roughly the area of the roof (roofly the area of the rough?) .  Assuming energy were entirely miscible, what proportion of the total energy needs (except food, of course) of Santa Feans would that generate.  I assume hundreds of percents, right? 

 

N

 

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 10:51 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A Theory of (Almost) Everything - IEEE Spectrum

 

Almost, but not quite, Jochen.  He doesn't know about embodied energy.  A motor car has an embodied energy contents of 20 800k kWh, while an electric car's embodied energy amounts to 34 700 kWh.  Perhaps if he knew this he wouldn't be so optimistic.  We are racing toward our doom.

 

On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 10:06 AM Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Interesting IEEE podcast: an interview with Václav Smil, who wrote a book about "Grand Transitions", similar to "The Major Transitions in Evolution" from John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry 

https://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/geek-life/history/a-theory-of-almost-everything

 

-J.

 

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--

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @merle110

 

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--

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @merle110

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[thompnickson2]

Pieter,

 

That just HAS to be wrong.  What am I missing, here?  NOT a rhetorical question.

 

Does anybody know, in orders of magnitude, the relation between the potential rooftop gain and the total energy needs of a place like Santa Fe?

 

N

 

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Pieter Steenekamp
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 11:58 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A Theory of (Almost) Everything - IEEE Spectrum

 

Yeah, just like we were seriously running out of stuff in 1980
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon%E2%80%93Ehrlich_wager
But of course, it's different this time around

 

On Thu, 15 Apr 2021 at 19:41, Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]> wrote:

Nick, I think we have an energy supply problem.  We don't have enough stuff left in the ground to dig up to supply our technology much longer at a price anyone can afford.  I have a colleague who has calculated that we will run out of copper in three years, as just one example.  My understanding is that copper wire conducts most of our electricity.   

 

On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 11:17 AM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Merle, and all,

 

A naïve question:  Do we have an energy supply problem or do we have an energy distribution problem?   For starters, let there be a solar collector on the roof of every house in santa fe, roughly the area of the roof (roofly the area of the rough?) .  Assuming energy were entirely miscible, what proportion of the total energy needs (except food, of course) of Santa Feans would that generate.  I assume hundreds of percents, right? 

 

N

 

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 10:51 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A Theory of (Almost) Everything - IEEE Spectrum

 

Almost, but not quite, Jochen.  He doesn't know about embodied energy.  A motor car has an embodied energy contents of 20 800k kWh, while an electric car's embodied energy amounts to 34 700 kWh.  Perhaps if he knew this he wouldn't be so optimistic.  We are racing toward our doom.

 

On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 10:06 AM Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Interesting IEEE podcast: an interview with Václav Smil, who wrote a book about "Grand Transitions", similar to "The Major Transitions in Evolution" from John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry 

https://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/geek-life/history/a-theory-of-almost-everything

 

-J.

 

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--

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @merle110

 

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--

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @merle110

 

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[Marcus G. Daniels]

The problem is what to do at night.   Santa Fe could invest in a big battery system to soak up excess during the day. 

That means the city would have buy megawatt-scale batteries and homeowners would need to broadly deploy panels and/or have their own batteries.

How many people want another loan for a payoff that takes a decade to turn a profit?

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of [hidden email]
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 11:11 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A Theory of (Almost) Everything - IEEE Spectrum

 

Pieter,

 

That just HAS to be wrong.  What am I missing, here?  NOT a rhetorical question.

 

Does anybody know, in orders of magnitude, the relation between the potential rooftop gain and the total energy needs of a place like Santa Fe?

 

N

 

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Pieter Steenekamp
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 11:58 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A Theory of (Almost) Everything - IEEE Spectrum

 

Yeah, just like we were seriously running out of stuff in 1980
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon%E2%80%93Ehrlich_wager
But of course, it's different this time around

 

On Thu, 15 Apr 2021 at 19:41, Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]> wrote:

Nick, I think we have an energy supply problem.  We don't have enough stuff left in the ground to dig up to supply our technology much longer at a price anyone can afford.  I have a colleague who has calculated that we will run out of copper in three years, as just one example.  My understanding is that copper wire conducts most of our electricity.   

 

On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 11:17 AM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Merle, and all,

 

A naïve question:  Do we have an energy supply problem or do we have an energy distribution problem?   For starters, let there be a solar collector on the roof of every house in santa fe, roughly the area of the roof (roofly the area of the rough?) .  Assuming energy were entirely miscible, what proportion of the total energy needs (except food, of course) of Santa Feans would that generate.  I assume hundreds of percents, right? 

 

N

 

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 10:51 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A Theory of (Almost) Everything - IEEE Spectrum

 

Almost, but not quite, Jochen.  He doesn't know about embodied energy.  A motor car has an embodied energy contents of 20 800k kWh, while an electric car's embodied energy amounts to 34 700 kWh.  Perhaps if he knew this he wouldn't be so optimistic.  We are racing toward our doom.

 

On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 10:06 AM Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Interesting IEEE podcast: an interview with Václav Smil, who wrote a book about "Grand Transitions", similar to "The Major Transitions in Evolution" from John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry 

https://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/geek-life/history/a-theory-of-almost-everything

 

-J.

 

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--

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @merle110

 

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--

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @merle110

 

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[Pieter Steenekamp]

Nick,

I'm not with you, what HAS to be wrong?

It's impossible to predict the future, anything could happen. I'm particularly attracted to the views of David Deutsch. I quote from his https://www.thebeginningofinfinity.com/ :
"  The resulting stream of ever-improving explanations has potentially  infinite reach: we are subject only to the laws of physics, and they impose no upper limit to what we can eventually understand, control, and achieve.  "

Life on earth is good and is getting better and better for all of us. Sure, a disaster could strike, nothing is inevitable, but I can see no reason why the progress we have made HAS to stop. Why?

On Thu, 15 Apr 2021 at 20:11, <[hidden email]> wrote:

Pieter,

 

That just HAS to be wrong.  What am I missing, here?  NOT a rhetorical question.

 

Does anybody know, in orders of magnitude, the relation between the potential rooftop gain and the total energy needs of a place like Santa Fe?

 

N

 

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Pieter Steenekamp
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 11:58 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A Theory of (Almost) Everything - IEEE Spectrum

 

Yeah, just like we were seriously running out of stuff in 1980
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon%E2%80%93Ehrlich_wager
But of course, it's different this time around

 

On Thu, 15 Apr 2021 at 19:41, Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]> wrote:

Nick, I think we have an energy supply problem.  We don't have enough stuff left in the ground to dig up to supply our technology much longer at a price anyone can afford.  I have a colleague who has calculated that we will run out of copper in three years, as just one example.  My understanding is that copper wire conducts most of our electricity.   

 

On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 11:17 AM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Merle, and all,

 

A naïve question:  Do we have an energy supply problem or do we have an energy distribution problem?   For starters, let there be a solar collector on the roof of every house in santa fe, roughly the area of the roof (roofly the area of the rough?) .  Assuming energy were entirely miscible, what proportion of the total energy needs (except food, of course) of Santa Feans would that generate.  I assume hundreds of percents, right? 

 

N

 

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 10:51 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A Theory of (Almost) Everything - IEEE Spectrum

 

Almost, but not quite, Jochen.  He doesn't know about embodied energy.  A motor car has an embodied energy contents of 20 800k kWh, while an electric car's embodied energy amounts to 34 700 kWh.  Perhaps if he knew this he wouldn't be so optimistic.  We are racing toward our doom.

 

On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 10:06 AM Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Interesting IEEE podcast: an interview with Václav Smil, who wrote a book about "Grand Transitions", similar to "The Major Transitions in Evolution" from John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry 

https://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/geek-life/history/a-theory-of-almost-everything

 

-J.

 

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Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
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Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

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mobile:  [phone]
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[thompnickson2]

Pieter,

 

I meant the “has to be” a bit ironically.  The sound of an ugly fact puncturing a beautiful theory.  Psssssst!

 

If I were to believe that populations were rising, that copper use was rising,  that copper supplies were flat or dwindling, why would I not expect copper prices to be rising? 

 

Which of my assumptions is wrong. 

 

Or is it your expectation that we will develop a plastic with the conductive properties of copper?

 

 

 

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Pieter Steenekamp
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 1:03 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A Theory of (Almost) Everything - IEEE Spectrum

 

Nick,

I'm not with you, what HAS to be wrong?

It's impossible to predict the future, anything could happen. I'm particularly attracted to the views of David Deutsch. I quote from his https://www.thebeginningofinfinity.com/ :
"  The resulting stream of ever-improving explanations has potentially  infinite reach: we are subject only to the laws of physics, and they impose no upper limit to what we can eventually understand, control, and achieve.  "

Life on earth is good and is getting better and better for all of us. Sure, a disaster could strike, nothing is inevitable, but I can see no reason why the progress we have made HAS to stop. Why?

 

On Thu, 15 Apr 2021 at 20:11, <[hidden email]> wrote:

Pieter,

 

That just HAS to be wrong.  What am I missing, here?  NOT a rhetorical question.

 

Does anybody know, in orders of magnitude, the relation between the potential rooftop gain and the total energy needs of a place like Santa Fe?

 

N

 

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Pieter Steenekamp
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 11:58 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A Theory of (Almost) Everything - IEEE Spectrum

 

Yeah, just like we were seriously running out of stuff in 1980
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon%E2%80%93Ehrlich_wager
But of course, it's different this time around

 

On Thu, 15 Apr 2021 at 19:41, Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]> wrote:

Nick, I think we have an energy supply problem.  We don't have enough stuff left in the ground to dig up to supply our technology much longer at a price anyone can afford.  I have a colleague who has calculated that we will run out of copper in three years, as just one example.  My understanding is that copper wire conducts most of our electricity.   

 

On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 11:17 AM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Merle, and all,

 

A naïve question:  Do we have an energy supply problem or do we have an energy distribution problem?   For starters, let there be a solar collector on the roof of every house in santa fe, roughly the area of the roof (roofly the area of the rough?) .  Assuming energy were entirely miscible, what proportion of the total energy needs (except food, of course) of Santa Feans would that generate.  I assume hundreds of percents, right? 

 

N

 

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 10:51 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A Theory of (Almost) Everything - IEEE Spectrum

 

Almost, but not quite, Jochen.  He doesn't know about embodied energy.  A motor car has an embodied energy contents of 20 800k kWh, while an electric car's embodied energy amounts to 34 700 kWh.  Perhaps if he knew this he wouldn't be so optimistic.  We are racing toward our doom.

 

On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 10:06 AM Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Interesting IEEE podcast: an interview with Václav Smil, who wrote a book about "Grand Transitions", similar to "The Major Transitions in Evolution" from John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry 

https://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/geek-life/history/a-theory-of-almost-everything

 

-J.

 

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--

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @merle110

 

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--

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @merle110

 

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[Pieter Steenekamp]

Nick,

Simple, because the technology to get copper out of the earth and convert it into a usable form is developing faster than population rise and supplies dwindling.
My argument is that exactly this has been happening for centuries, why would it suddenly stop now? 
Going back to the 1980 bet between Simon and Ehlrig https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon%E2%80%93Ehrlich_wager. According to Ehlrig we should have run out of resources long ago, but technological development made a big difference. Another example, the US was on her way to run out of oil a couple of decades ago and is now an exporter of oil. 

I repeat, I'm not saying it WILL happen. All I'm saying is not to assume technological development HAS to end end doom HAS to happen. We just don't know what the future will bring and there are people like David Deutsch that see a very bright future for humanity. 

Back to copper, I quote from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_copper :

Julian Simon was a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a professor of business and economics. In his book The Ultimate Resource 2 (first printed in 1981 and reprinted in 1998), he extensively criticizes the notion of "peak resources", and uses copper as one example. He argues that, even though "peak copper" has been a persistent scare since the early 20th century, "known reserves" grew at a rate that outpaced demand, and the price of copper was not rising but falling over the long run. For example, even though world production of copper in 1950 was only one-eighth of what it was in early-2000s, known reserves were also much lower at the time – around 100 million metric tons – making it appear that the world would run out of copper in 40 to 50 years at most.

Simon's own explanation for this development is that the very notion of known reserves is deeply flawed,^[39] as it does not take into account changes in mining profitability. As richer mines are exhausted, developers turn their attention to poorer sources of the element and eventually develop cheap methods of extracting it, raising known reserves. Thus, for example, copper was so abundant 5000 years ago, occurring in pure form as well as in highly concentrated copper ores, that prehistoric peoples were able to collect and process it with very basic technology. As of the early 21st century, copper is commonly mined from ores that contain 0.3% to 0.6% copper by weight. Yet, despite the material being far less widespread, the cost of, for example, a copper pot was vastly lower in the late 20th century than 5000 years ago.^[40]

Simon essentially states that not all viable copper has been discovered and that not all technological advancements in mining and refining have occurred, so statements that the point of peak copper has been or will be reached must be false. Simon supports his argument by showing that copper supplies have increased and prices have fallen.

On Thu, 15 Apr 2021 at 21:13, <[hidden email]> wrote:

Pieter,

 

I meant the “has to be” a bit ironically.  The sound of an ugly fact puncturing a beautiful theory.  Psssssst!

 

If I were to believe that populations were rising, that copper use was rising,  that copper supplies were flat or dwindling, why would I not expect copper prices to be rising? 

 

Which of my assumptions is wrong. 

 

Or is it your expectation that we will develop a plastic with the conductive properties of copper?

 

 

 

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Pieter Steenekamp
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 1:03 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A Theory of (Almost) Everything - IEEE Spectrum

 

Nick,

I'm not with you, what HAS to be wrong?

It's impossible to predict the future, anything could happen. I'm particularly attracted to the views of David Deutsch. I quote from his https://www.thebeginningofinfinity.com/ :
"  The resulting stream of ever-improving explanations has potentially  infinite reach: we are subject only to the laws of physics, and they impose no upper limit to what we can eventually understand, control, and achieve.  "

Life on earth is good and is getting better and better for all of us. Sure, a disaster could strike, nothing is inevitable, but I can see no reason why the progress we have made HAS to stop. Why?

 

On Thu, 15 Apr 2021 at 20:11, <[hidden email]> wrote:

Pieter,

 

That just HAS to be wrong.  What am I missing, here?  NOT a rhetorical question.

 

Does anybody know, in orders of magnitude, the relation between the potential rooftop gain and the total energy needs of a place like Santa Fe?

 

N

 

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Pieter Steenekamp
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 11:58 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A Theory of (Almost) Everything - IEEE Spectrum

 

Yeah, just like we were seriously running out of stuff in 1980
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon%E2%80%93Ehrlich_wager
But of course, it's different this time around

 

On Thu, 15 Apr 2021 at 19:41, Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]> wrote:

Nick, I think we have an energy supply problem.  We don't have enough stuff left in the ground to dig up to supply our technology much longer at a price anyone can afford.  I have a colleague who has calculated that we will run out of copper in three years, as just one example.  My understanding is that copper wire conducts most of our electricity.   

 

On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 11:17 AM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Merle, and all,

 

A naïve question:  Do we have an energy supply problem or do we have an energy distribution problem?   For starters, let there be a solar collector on the roof of every house in santa fe, roughly the area of the roof (roofly the area of the rough?) .  Assuming energy were entirely miscible, what proportion of the total energy needs (except food, of course) of Santa Feans would that generate.  I assume hundreds of percents, right? 

 

N

 

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 10:51 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A Theory of (Almost) Everything - IEEE Spectrum

 

Almost, but not quite, Jochen.  He doesn't know about embodied energy.  A motor car has an embodied energy contents of 20 800k kWh, while an electric car's embodied energy amounts to 34 700 kWh.  Perhaps if he knew this he wouldn't be so optimistic.  We are racing toward our doom.

 

On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 10:06 AM Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Interesting IEEE podcast: an interview with Václav Smil, who wrote a book about "Grand Transitions", similar to "The Major Transitions in Evolution" from John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry 

https://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/geek-life/history/a-theory-of-almost-everything

 

-J.

 

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Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

mobile:  [phone]
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twitter: @merle110

 

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--

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @merle110

 

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[Frank Wimberly-2]

I had a beautiful house in Pittsburgh which had been built in the late thirties.  Slate roof, copper plumbing, small steel minibeams in the basement supporting a concrete slab, the plaster walls contained 2x6 boards on 18 inch centers, etc.  The gutters and downspouts we're copper and were 50 years old.  I decided to have new ones installed which were larger and made of aluminum.  Each floor (of three) was over 1000 square feet.

The contractor took away about a ton of copper.  I wonder what the value of that was.

On Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 1:13 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Pieter,

 

I meant the “has to be” a bit ironically.  The sound of an ugly fact puncturing a beautiful theory.  Psssssst!

 

If I were to believe that populations were rising, that copper use was rising,  that copper supplies were flat or dwindling, why would I not expect copper prices to be rising? 

 

Which of my assumptions is wrong. 

 

Or is it your expectation that we will develop a plastic with the conductive properties of copper?

 

 

 

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Pieter Steenekamp
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 1:03 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A Theory of (Almost) Everything - IEEE Spectrum

 

Nick,

I'm not with you, what HAS to be wrong?

It's impossible to predict the future, anything could happen. I'm particularly attracted to the views of David Deutsch. I quote from his https://www.thebeginningofinfinity.com/ :
"  The resulting stream of ever-improving explanations has potentially  infinite reach: we are subject only to the laws of physics, and they impose no upper limit to what we can eventually understand, control, and achieve.  "

Life on earth is good and is getting better and better for all of us. Sure, a disaster could strike, nothing is inevitable, but I can see no reason why the progress we have made HAS to stop. Why?

 

On Thu, 15 Apr 2021 at 20:11, <[hidden email]> wrote:

Pieter,

 

That just HAS to be wrong.  What am I missing, here?  NOT a rhetorical question.

 

Does anybody know, in orders of magnitude, the relation between the potential rooftop gain and the total energy needs of a place like Santa Fe?

 

N

 

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Pieter Steenekamp
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 11:58 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A Theory of (Almost) Everything - IEEE Spectrum

 

Yeah, just like we were seriously running out of stuff in 1980
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon%E2%80%93Ehrlich_wager
But of course, it's different this time around

 

On Thu, 15 Apr 2021 at 19:41, Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]> wrote:

Nick, I think we have an energy supply problem.  We don't have enough stuff left in the ground to dig up to supply our technology much longer at a price anyone can afford.  I have a colleague who has calculated that we will run out of copper in three years, as just one example.  My understanding is that copper wire conducts most of our electricity.   

 

On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 11:17 AM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Merle, and all,

 

A naïve question:  Do we have an energy supply problem or do we have an energy distribution problem?   For starters, let there be a solar collector on the roof of every house in santa fe, roughly the area of the roof (roofly the area of the rough?) .  Assuming energy were entirely miscible, what proportion of the total energy needs (except food, of course) of Santa Feans would that generate.  I assume hundreds of percents, right? 

 

N

 

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 10:51 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A Theory of (Almost) Everything - IEEE Spectrum

 

Almost, but not quite, Jochen.  He doesn't know about embodied energy.  A motor car has an embodied energy contents of 20 800k kWh, while an electric car's embodied energy amounts to 34 700 kWh.  Perhaps if he knew this he wouldn't be so optimistic.  We are racing toward our doom.

 

On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 10:06 AM Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Interesting IEEE podcast: an interview with Václav Smil, who wrote a book about "Grand Transitions", similar to "The Major Transitions in Evolution" from John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry 

https://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/geek-life/history/a-theory-of-almost-everything

 

-J.

 

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--

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @merle110

 

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--

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @merle110

 

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[Stephen Guerin-5]

We don't have an energy problem. Energy is conserved. We have a "free energy" problem. 

On Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 11:17 AM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Merle, and all,

 

A naïve question:  Do we have an energy supply problem or do we have an energy distribution problem?   For starters, let there be a solar collector on the roof of every house in santa fe, roughly the area of the roof (roofly the area of the rough?) .  Assuming energy were entirely miscible, what proportion of the total energy needs (except food, of course) of Santa Feans would that generate.  I assume hundreds of percents, right? 

 

N

 

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 10:51 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A Theory of (Almost) Everything - IEEE Spectrum

 

Almost, but not quite, Jochen.  He doesn't know about embodied energy.  A motor car has an embodied energy contents of 20 800k kWh, while an electric car's embodied energy amounts to 34 700 kWh.  Perhaps if he knew this he wouldn't be so optimistic.  We are racing toward our doom.

 

On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 10:06 AM Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Interesting IEEE podcast: an interview with Václav Smil, who wrote a book about "Grand Transitions", similar to "The Major Transitions in Evolution" from John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry 

https://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/geek-life/history/a-theory-of-almost-everything

 

-J.

 

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[Gillian Densmore]

@Pieter Steenekamp

Gaming,powerlines,"smart"phones and blah blah blah. All that shit is eating a fuckton  or of raw materials. Just in general. Fortunately one of the more fucking cool things to come 2020, is getting used things you need, or want. The keyboard, microphone , and mouse I are all used. People doing that takes some amount of pressure out of the demand for god knows how many materials. And yeah, their are some stupendously kick ass things coming up. And it is impossible to predict the future, in general. If you had asked me 4 years ago if we could put enough satalites in orbit to get very roughly DSL speed internet and VOIP I would have skeptical, probably. and even 7-8 years ago, I would be more iritated that AI and kick ass things like robotics aren't further along.

We  are running out of redly accessable materials though https://news.sky.com/story/why-disposable-smartphones-are-threatening-the-periodic-table-11614155

On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 1:45 PM Pieter Steenekamp <[hidden email]> wrote:

Nick,

Simple, because the technology to get copper out of the earth and convert it into a usable form is developing faster than population rise and supplies dwindling.
My argument is that exactly this has been happening for centuries, why would it suddenly stop now? 
Going back to the 1980 bet between Simon and Ehlrig https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon%E2%80%93Ehrlich_wager. According to Ehlrig we should have run out of resources long ago, but technological development made a big difference. Another example, the US was on her way to run out of oil a couple of decades ago and is now an exporter of oil. 

I repeat, I'm not saying it WILL happen. All I'm saying is not to assume technological development HAS to end end doom HAS to happen. We just don't know what the future will bring and there are people like David Deutsch that see a very bright future for humanity. 

Back to copper, I quote from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_copper :

Julian Simon was a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a professor of business and economics. In his book The Ultimate Resource 2 (first printed in 1981 and reprinted in 1998), he extensively criticizes the notion of "peak resources", and uses copper as one example. He argues that, even though "peak copper" has been a persistent scare since the early 20th century, "known reserves" grew at a rate that outpaced demand, and the price of copper was not rising but falling over the long run. For example, even though world production of copper in 1950 was only one-eighth of what it was in early-2000s, known reserves were also much lower at the time – around 100 million metric tons – making it appear that the world would run out of copper in 40 to 50 years at most.

Simon's own explanation for this development is that the very notion of known reserves is deeply flawed,^[39] as it does not take into account changes in mining profitability. As richer mines are exhausted, developers turn their attention to poorer sources of the element and eventually develop cheap methods of extracting it, raising known reserves. Thus, for example, copper was so abundant 5000 years ago, occurring in pure form as well as in highly concentrated copper ores, that prehistoric peoples were able to collect and process it with very basic technology. As of the early 21st century, copper is commonly mined from ores that contain 0.3% to 0.6% copper by weight. Yet, despite the material being far less widespread, the cost of, for example, a copper pot was vastly lower in the late 20th century than 5000 years ago.^[40]

Simon essentially states that not all viable copper has been discovered and that not all technological advancements in mining and refining have occurred, so statements that the point of peak copper has been or will be reached must be false. Simon supports his argument by showing that copper supplies have increased and prices have fallen.

On Thu, 15 Apr 2021 at 21:13, <[hidden email]> wrote:

Pieter,

 

I meant the “has to be” a bit ironically.  The sound of an ugly fact puncturing a beautiful theory.  Psssssst!

 

If I were to believe that populations were rising, that copper use was rising,  that copper supplies were flat or dwindling, why would I not expect copper prices to be rising? 

 

Which of my assumptions is wrong. 

 

Or is it your expectation that we will develop a plastic with the conductive properties of copper?

 

 

 

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Pieter Steenekamp
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 1:03 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A Theory of (Almost) Everything - IEEE Spectrum

 

Nick,

I'm not with you, what HAS to be wrong?

It's impossible to predict the future, anything could happen. I'm particularly attracted to the views of David Deutsch. I quote from his https://www.thebeginningofinfinity.com/ :
"  The resulting stream of ever-improving explanations has potentially  infinite reach: we are subject only to the laws of physics, and they impose no upper limit to what we can eventually understand, control, and achieve.  "

Life on earth is good and is getting better and better for all of us. Sure, a disaster could strike, nothing is inevitable, but I can see no reason why the progress we have made HAS to stop. Why?

 

On Thu, 15 Apr 2021 at 20:11, <[hidden email]> wrote:

Pieter,

 

That just HAS to be wrong.  What am I missing, here?  NOT a rhetorical question.

 

Does anybody know, in orders of magnitude, the relation between the potential rooftop gain and the total energy needs of a place like Santa Fe?

 

N

 

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Pieter Steenekamp
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 11:58 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A Theory of (Almost) Everything - IEEE Spectrum

 

Yeah, just like we were seriously running out of stuff in 1980
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon%E2%80%93Ehrlich_wager
But of course, it's different this time around

 

On Thu, 15 Apr 2021 at 19:41, Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]> wrote:

Nick, I think we have an energy supply problem.  We don't have enough stuff left in the ground to dig up to supply our technology much longer at a price anyone can afford.  I have a colleague who has calculated that we will run out of copper in three years, as just one example.  My understanding is that copper wire conducts most of our electricity.   

 

On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 11:17 AM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Merle, and all,

 

A naïve question:  Do we have an energy supply problem or do we have an energy distribution problem?   For starters, let there be a solar collector on the roof of every house in santa fe, roughly the area of the roof (roofly the area of the rough?) .  Assuming energy were entirely miscible, what proportion of the total energy needs (except food, of course) of Santa Feans would that generate.  I assume hundreds of percents, right? 

 

N

 

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 10:51 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A Theory of (Almost) Everything - IEEE Spectrum

 

Almost, but not quite, Jochen.  He doesn't know about embodied energy.  A motor car has an embodied energy contents of 20 800k kWh, while an electric car's embodied energy amounts to 34 700 kWh.  Perhaps if he knew this he wouldn't be so optimistic.  We are racing toward our doom.

 

On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 10:06 AM Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Interesting IEEE podcast: an interview with Václav Smil, who wrote a book about "Grand Transitions", similar to "The Major Transitions in Evolution" from John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry 

https://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/geek-life/history/a-theory-of-almost-everything

 

-J.

 

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[Gillian Densmore]

lol that is true. Now what happens when you are free of energy? and is that conserved in a coffee pot.

Oh speaking of hopeful developments! this is promising: https://www.energylivenews.com/2020/09/02/us-startup-unveils-battery-made-from-nuclear-waste-that-could-last-up-to-28000-years/

Anyone know how soon or easily those can be made to power phones, or even a coffee maker? Is my understand right part of the problem is getting either enough stuff, or the right mix of stuff to make energy over just a few moles of electricity?

On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 1:53 PM Stephen Guerin <[hidden email]> wrote:

We don't have an energy problem. Energy is conserved. We have a "free energy" problem. 

On Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 11:17 AM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Merle, and all,

 

A naïve question:  Do we have an energy supply problem or do we have an energy distribution problem?   For starters, let there be a solar collector on the roof of every house in santa fe, roughly the area of the roof (roofly the area of the rough?) .  Assuming energy were entirely miscible, what proportion of the total energy needs (except food, of course) of Santa Feans would that generate.  I assume hundreds of percents, right? 

 

N

 

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 10:51 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A Theory of (Almost) Everything - IEEE Spectrum

 

Almost, but not quite, Jochen.  He doesn't know about embodied energy.  A motor car has an embodied energy contents of 20 800k kWh, while an electric car's embodied energy amounts to 34 700 kWh.  Perhaps if he knew this he wouldn't be so optimistic.  We are racing toward our doom.

 

On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 10:06 AM Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Interesting IEEE podcast: an interview with Václav Smil, who wrote a book about "Grand Transitions", similar to "The Major Transitions in Evolution" from John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry 

https://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/geek-life/history/a-theory-of-almost-everything

 

-J.

 

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[David Eric Smith]

I worry that all these conversations are hard to have in a form that is useful for the relevant timescales, because they are all what would be called “partial equilibrium” calculations in Marshall’s terms.

Meaning: you take a bunch of systemic properties for which you don’t try to model feedbacks as if they are fixed, and then study the effect of one factor.  So if oil gets cheaper for a time, and you are using oil to run the extraction machines and smelters to get pure copper from ores, then you can extract from lower grade ores for a while and still have money-prices go down.  Likewise trans-global vegetable shipments from southern-hemisphere countries while the US homogenizes on corn and soybean farming etc.  If there are long-term stresses either on (Steve G is right: free)-energy supplies, or on climate impacts from consuming (dissipating) them, or on soil quality or fragility under drought/flood, or dozens of other things, then the Marshallian “external” prices changes under which the extraction of low-grade ores, the distant-sourcing of foods, etc.  got cheaper will no longer pertain.

There are two things one would need to do to do better.  Both are costly and difficult, and we live in a society where increasingly whatever a Spiegelman’s monster can’t do doesn’t get done.  Consider how many times Kati Kariko nearly got kicked out of science, because there was no room or interest for the work of uncertain outcome that she wanted to do, or because her bosses kept moving to industry as public money migrated over to companies and public risk priorities got changed for corporate risk priorities.  The two things are:

1. EROEI analysis of whatever you want to talk about.  (Steve G: should be FEROFEI.). Energy return on energy invested through a lifecycle.  I know a guy who claims to have analysis that full cycle solar and wind don’t actually pay for themselves in free-energy terms if one accounts for every step from extraction of raw materials through replacement.  I don’t trust his analysis blindly, because he is another of these howling misanthropes who likes self-flogging in the public square, which I think is a vanity in place of just putting one’s head down and trying to solve something.  But he isn’t at all an idiot (a petroleum engineer, long-time university researcher, works for oil companies and has lived and worked in the Persian gulf nations when university options dried up), and his analysis could be partly or fully correct.  It would take more work than I am able to do to check it.  

There is another fly in the ointment of doing this, which is saying what counts as a “lifecycle”.  Economists like to talk about “disposal” as the endpoint of lifecycles — the city charges you $15 to haul off your dead refrigerator and throw it into a landfill — or today, sends part of it to India to be scavenged for small electronic bits -- is the model that mostly used to apply when the term became mainstreamed.  But of course if we really want a persistent set of methods, we need to use the biosphere as a model: apart from a net drain on continental weathering that only gets refreshed by tectonics and orogeny, what survives in the biosphere is limited to what can fully recycle everything else on the surface.  The EROEI analysis for a fully-recycling lifecycle becomes very hard if we require reprocessing of things like custom metal mixtures for which separation technologies are not currently used and would have to be invented or developed to industrial scale.

Economists like Simon like to downplay (really, ignore) this, on the grounds that they can do a partial equilibrium analysis and so want to emphasize that there is some analytic value in what they can do.  If they were more forthright about how much that analysis simply ignores, they would have to be quieter, and they wouldn’t be famous economists.  That’s a social Darwinism problem for us all.  

2. For any transition when you aren’t using a fully-recycling lifecycle, there has to be some kind of materials-flow analysis of constraints.  That would go into the direction of von Neumann’s input-output analysis (not Leontieff's, which is just money flows and thus partial equilibrium again), and gets very intricate and data- and labor-intensive.  I am not aware of any significant percentage of work of that kind for most problems, because there is not just the support to keep many people alive doing it.  

The end result being, then, that we try to have these arguments about long-term consequences of choices, pieced together as far as we can, from little patchwork analyses and first-derivatives of current technologies.  No criticism for trying to do what one can, but it’s not a very strong method to get reliable causal claims.

Putting “human capacity for innovation” in as a tangent is maybe the most fragile of all.  Not wrong to do it, but it depends so heavily on the “ceteris paribus” condition.  Moore’s law held for how many decades?  Some thing that it held in part because it created a forecast of technological expectations, which companies then tried to meet.  But that couldn’t continue for ever either.  That was probably the simplest possible example, because the “kind” of progress that needed to be made was mostly homogeneous.  For most of “innovation” what is required is the discovery of.novel approaches; very hard to argue that those fall on scaling laws; though if they appear to do so empirically it is worth noting.

Eric

On Apr 16, 2021, at 4:44 AM, Pieter Steenekamp <[hidden email]> wrote:

Nick,

Simple, because the technology to get copper out of the earth and convert it into a usable form is developing faster than population rise and supplies dwindling.
My argument is that exactly this has been happening for centuries, why would it suddenly stop now? 
Going back to the 1980 bet between Simon and Ehlrig https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon%E2%80%93Ehrlich_wager. According to Ehlrig we should have run out of resources long ago, but technological development made a big difference. Another example, the US was on her way to run out of oil a couple of decades ago and is now an exporter of oil. 

I repeat, I'm not saying it WILL happen. All I'm saying is not to assume technological development HAS to end end doom HAS to happen. We just don't know what the future will bring and there are people like David Deutsch that see a very bright future for humanity. 

Back to copper, I quote from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_copper :

Julian Simon was a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a professor of business and economics. In his book The Ultimate Resource 2 (first printed in 1981 and reprinted in 1998), he extensively criticizes the notion of "peak resources", and uses copper as one example. He argues that, even though "peak copper" has been a persistent scare since the early 20th century, "known reserves" grew at a rate that outpaced demand, and the price of copper was not rising but falling over the long run. For example, even though world production of copper in 1950 was only one-eighth of what it was in early-2000s, known reserves were also much lower at the time – around 100 million metric tons – making it appear that the world would run out of copper in 40 to 50 years at most.

Simon's own explanation for this development is that the very notion of known reserves is deeply flawed,^[39] as it does not take into account changes in mining profitability. As richer mines are exhausted, developers turn their attention to poorer sources of the element and eventually develop cheap methods of extracting it, raising known reserves. Thus, for example, copper was so abundant 5000 years ago, occurring in pure form as well as in highly concentrated copper ores, that prehistoric peoples were able to collect and process it with very basic technology. As of the early 21st century, copper is commonly mined from ores that contain 0.3% to 0.6% copper by weight. Yet, despite the material being far less widespread, the cost of, for example, a copper pot was vastly lower in the late 20th century than 5000 years ago.^[40]

Simon essentially states that not all viable copper has been discovered and that not all technological advancements in mining and refining have occurred, so statements that the point of peak copper has been or will be reached must be false. Simon supports his argument by showing that copper supplies have increased and prices have fallen.

On Thu, 15 Apr 2021 at 21:13, <[hidden email]> wrote:

Pieter,

 

I meant the “has to be” a bit ironically.  The sound of an ugly fact puncturing a beautiful theory.  Psssssst!

 

If I were to believe that populations were rising, that copper use was rising,  that copper supplies were flat or dwindling, why would I not expect copper prices to be rising? 

 

Which of my assumptions is wrong. 

 

Or is it your expectation that we will develop a plastic with the conductive properties of copper?

 

 

 

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Pieter Steenekamp
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 1:03 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A Theory of (Almost) Everything - IEEE Spectrum

 

Nick,

I'm not with you, what HAS to be wrong?

It's impossible to predict the future, anything could happen. I'm particularly attracted to the views of David Deutsch. I quote from his https://www.thebeginningofinfinity.com/ :
"  The resulting stream of ever-improving explanations has potentially  infinite reach: we are subject only to the laws of physics, and they impose no upper limit to what we can eventually understand, control, and achieve.  "

Life on earth is good and is getting better and better for all of us. Sure, a disaster could strike, nothing is inevitable, but I can see no reason why the progress we have made HAS to stop. Why?

 

On Thu, 15 Apr 2021 at 20:11, <[hidden email]> wrote:

Pieter,

 

That just HAS to be wrong.  What am I missing, here?  NOT a rhetorical question.

 

Does anybody know, in orders of magnitude, the relation between the potential rooftop gain and the total energy needs of a place like Santa Fe?

 

N

 

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Pieter Steenekamp
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 11:58 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A Theory of (Almost) Everything - IEEE Spectrum

 

Yeah, just like we were seriously running out of stuff in 1980
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon%E2%80%93Ehrlich_wager
But of course, it's different this time around

 

On Thu, 15 Apr 2021 at 19:41, Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]> wrote:

Nick, I think we have an energy supply problem.  We don't have enough stuff left in the ground to dig up to supply our technology much longer at a price anyone can afford.  I have a colleague who has calculated that we will run out of copper in three years, as just one example.  My understanding is that copper wire conducts most of our electricity.   

 

On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 11:17 AM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Merle, and all,

 

A naïve question:  Do we have an energy supply problem or do we have an energy distribution problem?   For starters, let there be a solar collector on the roof of every house in santa fe, roughly the area of the roof (roofly the area of the rough?) .  Assuming energy were entirely miscible, what proportion of the total energy needs (except food, of course) of Santa Feans would that generate.  I assume hundreds of percents, right? 

 

N

 

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 10:51 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A Theory of (Almost) Everything - IEEE Spectrum

 

Almost, but not quite, Jochen.  He doesn't know about embodied energy.  A motor car has an embodied energy contents of 20 800k kWh, while an electric car's embodied energy amounts to 34 700 kWh.  Perhaps if he knew this he wouldn't be so optimistic.  We are racing toward our doom.

 

On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 10:06 AM Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Interesting IEEE podcast: an interview with Václav Smil, who wrote a book about "Grand Transitions", similar to "The Major Transitions in Evolution" from John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry 

https://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/geek-life/history/a-theory-of-almost-everything

 

-J.

 

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--

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @merle110

 

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--

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @merle110

 

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[Merle Lefkoff-2]

Yes it is, Pieter.  Because the disruption is exponential with many positive feedback loops.

On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 11:59 AM Pieter Steenekamp <[hidden email]> wrote:

Yeah, just like we were seriously running out of stuff in 1980
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon%E2%80%93Ehrlich_wager
But of course, it's different this time around

On Thu, 15 Apr 2021 at 19:41, Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]> wrote:

Nick, I think we have an energy supply problem.  We don't have enough stuff left in the ground to dig up to supply our technology much longer at a price anyone can afford.  I have a colleague who has calculated that we will run out of copper in three years, as just one example.  My understanding is that copper wire conducts most of our electricity.   

On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 11:17 AM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Merle, and all,

 

A naïve question:  Do we have an energy supply problem or do we have an energy distribution problem?   For starters, let there be a solar collector on the roof of every house in santa fe, roughly the area of the roof (roofly the area of the rough?) .  Assuming energy were entirely miscible, what proportion of the total energy needs (except food, of course) of Santa Feans would that generate.  I assume hundreds of percents, right? 

 

N

 

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 10:51 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A Theory of (Almost) Everything - IEEE Spectrum

 

Almost, but not quite, Jochen.  He doesn't know about embodied energy.  A motor car has an embodied energy contents of 20 800k kWh, while an electric car's embodied energy amounts to 34 700 kWh.  Perhaps if he knew this he wouldn't be so optimistic.  We are racing toward our doom.

 

On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 10:06 AM Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Interesting IEEE podcast: an interview with Václav Smil, who wrote a book about "Grand Transitions", similar to "The Major Transitions in Evolution" from John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry 

https://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/geek-life/history/a-theory-of-almost-everything

 

-J.

 

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--

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @merle110

 

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--

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @merle110

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[Merle Lefkoff-2]

Pieter, your main assumption that is wrong is that there are no "upper limits."  That's just crazy!  Please do some research on planetary boundaries.  

People do not know that we are running out of copper, but as they find out, the price will go up, and if we have to suddenly find a replacement--like silver--the price will go up even more.

On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 1:13 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Pieter,

 

I meant the “has to be” a bit ironically.  The sound of an ugly fact puncturing a beautiful theory.  Psssssst!

 

If I were to believe that populations were rising, that copper use was rising,  that copper supplies were flat or dwindling, why would I not expect copper prices to be rising? 

 

Which of my assumptions is wrong. 

 

Or is it your expectation that we will develop a plastic with the conductive properties of copper?

 

 

 

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Pieter Steenekamp
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 1:03 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A Theory of (Almost) Everything - IEEE Spectrum

 

Nick,

I'm not with you, what HAS to be wrong?

It's impossible to predict the future, anything could happen. I'm particularly attracted to the views of David Deutsch. I quote from his https://www.thebeginningofinfinity.com/ :
"  The resulting stream of ever-improving explanations has potentially  infinite reach: we are subject only to the laws of physics, and they impose no upper limit to what we can eventually understand, control, and achieve.  "

Life on earth is good and is getting better and better for all of us. Sure, a disaster could strike, nothing is inevitable, but I can see no reason why the progress we have made HAS to stop. Why?

 

On Thu, 15 Apr 2021 at 20:11, <[hidden email]> wrote:

Pieter,

 

That just HAS to be wrong.  What am I missing, here?  NOT a rhetorical question.

 

Does anybody know, in orders of magnitude, the relation between the potential rooftop gain and the total energy needs of a place like Santa Fe?

 

N

 

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Pieter Steenekamp
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 11:58 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A Theory of (Almost) Everything - IEEE Spectrum

 

Yeah, just like we were seriously running out of stuff in 1980
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon%E2%80%93Ehrlich_wager
But of course, it's different this time around

 

On Thu, 15 Apr 2021 at 19:41, Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]> wrote:

Nick, I think we have an energy supply problem.  We don't have enough stuff left in the ground to dig up to supply our technology much longer at a price anyone can afford.  I have a colleague who has calculated that we will run out of copper in three years, as just one example.  My understanding is that copper wire conducts most of our electricity.   

 

On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 11:17 AM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Merle, and all,

 

A naïve question:  Do we have an energy supply problem or do we have an energy distribution problem?   For starters, let there be a solar collector on the roof of every house in santa fe, roughly the area of the roof (roofly the area of the rough?) .  Assuming energy were entirely miscible, what proportion of the total energy needs (except food, of course) of Santa Feans would that generate.  I assume hundreds of percents, right? 

 

N

 

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 10:51 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A Theory of (Almost) Everything - IEEE Spectrum

 

Almost, but not quite, Jochen.  He doesn't know about embodied energy.  A motor car has an embodied energy contents of 20 800k kWh, while an electric car's embodied energy amounts to 34 700 kWh.  Perhaps if he knew this he wouldn't be so optimistic.  We are racing toward our doom.

 

On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 10:06 AM Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Interesting IEEE podcast: an interview with Václav Smil, who wrote a book about "Grand Transitions", similar to "The Major Transitions in Evolution" from John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry 

https://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/geek-life/history/a-theory-of-almost-everything

 

-J.

 

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--

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @merle110

 

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--

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @merle110

 

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[Frank Wimberly-2]

Aluminum was used for wiring homes for a while until it was determined to increase fire risk.  Perhaps some alloy of aluminum would be safe and affordable.  Is William McCallum on the List?

On Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 3:57 PM Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]> wrote:

Pieter, your main assumption that is wrong is that there are no "upper limits."  That's just crazy!  Please do some research on planetary boundaries.  

People do not know that we are running out of copper, but as they find out, the price will go up, and if we have to suddenly find a replacement--like silver--the price will go up even more.

On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 1:13 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Pieter,

 

I meant the “has to be” a bit ironically.  The sound of an ugly fact puncturing a beautiful theory.  Psssssst!

 

If I were to believe that populations were rising, that copper use was rising,  that copper supplies were flat or dwindling, why would I not expect copper prices to be rising? 

 

Which of my assumptions is wrong. 

 

Or is it your expectation that we will develop a plastic with the conductive properties of copper?

 

 

 

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Pieter Steenekamp
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 1:03 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A Theory of (Almost) Everything - IEEE Spectrum

 

Nick,

I'm not with you, what HAS to be wrong?

It's impossible to predict the future, anything could happen. I'm particularly attracted to the views of David Deutsch. I quote from his https://www.thebeginningofinfinity.com/ :
"  The resulting stream of ever-improving explanations has potentially  infinite reach: we are subject only to the laws of physics, and they impose no upper limit to what we can eventually understand, control, and achieve.  "

Life on earth is good and is getting better and better for all of us. Sure, a disaster could strike, nothing is inevitable, but I can see no reason why the progress we have made HAS to stop. Why?

 

On Thu, 15 Apr 2021 at 20:11, <[hidden email]> wrote:

Pieter,

 

That just HAS to be wrong.  What am I missing, here?  NOT a rhetorical question.

 

Does anybody know, in orders of magnitude, the relation between the potential rooftop gain and the total energy needs of a place like Santa Fe?

 

N

 

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Pieter Steenekamp
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 11:58 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A Theory of (Almost) Everything - IEEE Spectrum

 

Yeah, just like we were seriously running out of stuff in 1980
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon%E2%80%93Ehrlich_wager
But of course, it's different this time around

 

On Thu, 15 Apr 2021 at 19:41, Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]> wrote:

Nick, I think we have an energy supply problem.  We don't have enough stuff left in the ground to dig up to supply our technology much longer at a price anyone can afford.  I have a colleague who has calculated that we will run out of copper in three years, as just one example.  My understanding is that copper wire conducts most of our electricity.   

 

On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 11:17 AM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Merle, and all,

 

A naïve question:  Do we have an energy supply problem or do we have an energy distribution problem?   For starters, let there be a solar collector on the roof of every house in santa fe, roughly the area of the roof (roofly the area of the rough?) .  Assuming energy were entirely miscible, what proportion of the total energy needs (except food, of course) of Santa Feans would that generate.  I assume hundreds of percents, right? 

 

N

 

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 10:51 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A Theory of (Almost) Everything - IEEE Spectrum

 

Almost, but not quite, Jochen.  He doesn't know about embodied energy.  A motor car has an embodied energy contents of 20 800k kWh, while an electric car's embodied energy amounts to 34 700 kWh.  Perhaps if he knew this he wouldn't be so optimistic.  We are racing toward our doom.

 

On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 10:06 AM Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Interesting IEEE podcast: an interview with Václav Smil, who wrote a book about "Grand Transitions", similar to "The Major Transitions in Evolution" from John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry 

https://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/geek-life/history/a-theory-of-almost-everything

 

-J.

 

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--

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @merle110

 

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--

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @merle110

 

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--

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @merle110

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[Marcus G. Daniels]

Planetary boundaries.   Screw that!  😊  Looking forward to that SN15 launch next week.    Find some copper there.

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 3:02 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A Theory of (Almost) Everything - IEEE Spectrum

 

Aluminum was used for wiring homes for a while until it was determined to increase fire risk.  Perhaps some alloy of aluminum would be safe and affordable.  Is William McCallum on the List?

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

 

On Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 3:57 PM Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]> wrote:

Pieter, your main assumption that is wrong is that there are no "upper limits."  That's just crazy!  Please do some research on planetary boundaries.  

 

People do not know that we are running out of copper, but as they find out, the price will go up, and if we have to suddenly find a replacement--like silver--the price will go up even more.

 

On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 1:13 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Pieter,

 

I meant the “has to be” a bit ironically.  The sound of an ugly fact puncturing a beautiful theory.  Psssssst!

 

If I were to believe that populations were rising, that copper use was rising,  that copper supplies were flat or dwindling, why would I not expect copper prices to be rising? 

 

Which of my assumptions is wrong. 

 

Or is it your expectation that we will develop a plastic with the conductive properties of copper?

 

 

 

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Pieter Steenekamp
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 1:03 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A Theory of (Almost) Everything - IEEE Spectrum

 

Nick,

I'm not with you, what HAS to be wrong?

It's impossible to predict the future, anything could happen. I'm particularly attracted to the views of David Deutsch. I quote from his https://www.thebeginningofinfinity.com/ :
"  The resulting stream of ever-improving explanations has potentially  infinite reach: we are subject only to the laws of physics, and they impose no upper limit to what we can eventually understand, control, and achieve.  "

Life on earth is good and is getting better and better for all of us. Sure, a disaster could strike, nothing is inevitable, but I can see no reason why the progress we have made HAS to stop. Why?

 

On Thu, 15 Apr 2021 at 20:11, <[hidden email]> wrote:

Pieter,

 

That just HAS to be wrong.  What am I missing, here?  NOT a rhetorical question.

 

Does anybody know, in orders of magnitude, the relation between the potential rooftop gain and the total energy needs of a place like Santa Fe?

 

N

 

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Pieter Steenekamp
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 11:58 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A Theory of (Almost) Everything - IEEE Spectrum

 

Yeah, just like we were seriously running out of stuff in 1980
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon%E2%80%93Ehrlich_wager
But of course, it's different this time around

 

On Thu, 15 Apr 2021 at 19:41, Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]> wrote:

Nick, I think we have an energy supply problem.  We don't have enough stuff left in the ground to dig up to supply our technology much longer at a price anyone can afford.  I have a colleague who has calculated that we will run out of copper in three years, as just one example.  My understanding is that copper wire conducts most of our electricity.   

 

On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 11:17 AM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Merle, and all,

 

A naïve question:  Do we have an energy supply problem or do we have an energy distribution problem?   For starters, let there be a solar collector on the roof of every house in santa fe, roughly the area of the roof (roofly the area of the rough?) .  Assuming energy were entirely miscible, what proportion of the total energy needs (except food, of course) of Santa Feans would that generate.  I assume hundreds of percents, right? 

 

N

 

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 10:51 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A Theory of (Almost) Everything - IEEE Spectrum

 

Almost, but not quite, Jochen.  He doesn't know about embodied energy.  A motor car has an embodied energy contents of 20 800k kWh, while an electric car's embodied energy amounts to 34 700 kWh.  Perhaps if he knew this he wouldn't be so optimistic.  We are racing toward our doom.

 

On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 10:06 AM Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Interesting IEEE podcast: an interview with Václav Smil, who wrote a book about "Grand Transitions", similar to "The Major Transitions in Evolution" from John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry 

https://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/geek-life/history/a-theory-of-almost-everything

 

-J.

 

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--

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @merle110

 

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--

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @merle110

 

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--

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @merle110

 

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