We simply don’t have the energy to sustainably support a population of billions. If we don’t find a way to solve the energy side of that equation (and we probably won’t), the other side will find a way to resolve itself, one way or another. War, famine, and disease seem the most likely paths.
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I think this is quite possibly untrue, and I don’t think this is a very useful argument even if it is true. If we don’t have enough energy, doesn’t that mean we need to put more resources into exploiting energy resources like coal?
The real problem is we have tons and tons of unextracted energy resources in the ground. And it’s necessary to keep those resources in the ground, since they contain enough embedded carbon to send us into primordial hellscape.
How we get Nigeria and Mexico and Brazil and Russia and the evil GOP slappies and everybody else who owns these vast unextracted resources to agree to not extract our energy resources altogether is the challenge. How we meet energy needs in the future seems almost secondary in comparison.
That’s what a robust military is for, once we get the US on board.
Yes, that stuff needs to stay in the ground. The sustainably qualifier is the key part of that sentence, which means some other source of energy. Basically it’s either fusion turning to sunlight, or we figure out how to do fusion down here, and in either case we get a lot better at storing and moving that energy around.
I think it is pretty unlikely we’re going to get either of those working at scale before the primordial hellscape starts to loom very large. At the point the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse start to do their thing and population numbers plummet.
The only other option is for 7+ billion people figuring out ways to survive with drastically reduced energy consumption, and that’s just not happening. We don’t just use that energy to go on vacation and raise kids. It’s how we grow our food.
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We’re already pushing the limits of how many humans our ecosystem has support even without climate change disrupting everything, I don’t see a long-term sustainable solution with 10 billion humans even if cold fusion actually becomes for reals.
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No, that’s not how we do it.
Progressives would support investment in renewable energies in those countries - Nigeria and Brazil are obvious candidates for solar - and reducing dependency on fossil exports.
Supporting investment sounds so… capitalist.
Leftists love investing in progressive infrastructure.
Capitalists love sending in the military.
We need more non-pacifist leftists.
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Regarding suitability for aviation fuel.
The other element is its behaviour and viscosity at different temperatures and changes in temperature.
This is one reason why existing aviation bio fuels are only authorized for use at less than 100% mix with traditional fuels (typically 10% to 50%). Although this is often risk aversion and an unwillingness to spend on testing rather than a genuine barrier.
Regarding whether this helps long term.
Its not a question of whether this helps now, or even in the next 10 years. All sub 2.0 degree scenarios have aviation as the last major sector to decarbonise. The question is does this technology move the learning curve forward and down enough to make bio aviation cost viable at scale in the 40s.
Regarding expertise to speak.
I’m often reminded of Jared Kushner “I’ve read 20 books on Israel-Palestine.” Its not whether you’ve learned a lot. Its whether you’ve learned enough.
Build Back Better, as it were.
grunching - yes.
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You mom’s a Borg?
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She had radar. She was talking to a friend that lives near the school when my 7 year old, older brother walked by. Mom asked if he had his hat on (that was a big effing deal to her). He did not.
When he got home from school, mom called him out for not wearing his hat. He asked how she knew. She said she had radar.
That legend persisted. I believed it literally for a few years.
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