Have you read "Where Is My Flying Car?" Part of the books answer to its eponymous question is that we stopped increasing our energy production*. The author analyses why, and concludes it was mostly due to poor incentives arising from institutional design and public sentiment which began demanding more regulation for ideological reasons. I mostly buy the books arguement, which dovetails with the point you're making in your article.
*If you look at what tech we should have by now, based off of predictions by Clarke and other futurists, then you mostly see the digital tech being on track and the physical tech nowhere in sight.
I understand it is just a metaphor, but flying cars were so popular in science fiction due to linear thinking and failure of imagination. What we have accomplished in personal technology is much more impressive. Mass personal flying cars are a terrible idea anyway. Traffic regulation would be a nightmare, accidents and fatalities would be rife, transportation costs including fuel costs would be immense, etc.
It's actually much easier to do traffic regulation in the air (3D, no obstacles above terrain features, easy to locate other traffic based on GPS and P2P radio comms). The tech for end-to-end flight automation exists and is in practical use.
Fuel-wise... small aircraft can actually get comparable MPG to cars, assuming modern engine technology (NOT the engines from 60s like Lycomings or Continentals... they still use magnetos) and modern aerodynamic design. (Otto Aviation's 8-seater transcontinental range airplane, Celera 500L, promise 18-25 mpg; even the 1960th design, 4-seater Cessna 172 gets around 17 mpg in cruise).
The reality of general aviation is that FAA regulation pretty much killed the industry - which is now stuck with decades-old technology due to ridiculous costs of certifying anything attached to an airplane. And don't get me started on the insanity of air-traffic control infrastructure.
It is a metaphor in so far as the author was questioning why personalised flying vehicles aren't common nowadays. He considers the points you make, and finds that they mostly don't stand up as an arguement against except for the last point i.e. energy costs would be high, so you need cheap energy.* Quite naturally, he then asks why we got off the Henry Adams curve.
It is interesting that you mention that personal tech is much more impressive than flying cars. From one perspective, the book is about why the world of "atoms" hasn't progressed as much as the world of "bits" (which I think is what you call "personal technology"). Why don't we even have flying cars, let alone moonbases or massive, beautiful cities or all the other marvels we were promised? Was it really inevitable that computers would produce all the modern day miracles?
*Other problems, in decreasing likelihood of a readily available solution, would be: graceful failure, vertical takeoff, energy density and noise. The former three are mostly solveable, with some trade-offs that could probably be resolved by engineering efforts. The latter doesn't have a solution in sight, but it doesn't seem like there's a fundamental barrier to a solution. Were these problems solved, then is seems likely that a great number of people would use the vehicles to e.g. visit far off family members in areas with poor transport, or to let them shift their homes further from city centers.
Some evidence for a market is the existence of the private-aircraft industry in the US. Admittedly, it isn't large right now. But the author argues that the size of the industry underestimates the potential size of the market, if one considers why private airplane usage crashed in the mid-late 20th century and didn't recover. According to the author, a few unlucky incidents like energy crisis drove several promising companies out of business and regulations thereafter crippled the industry, preventing its recovery. So a plausible counterfactual world without these regulations would have allowed the industry to recover to its previous size, around tenfold the present usage numbers if I recall correctly.
The book goes into great, rigorous detail on these topics, in particular that of flying vehicles. Unsurprising given that the author is an engineer. I highly recommend it.
Also, land covered by wind turbines can still be used for things like farming, farming between the turbine towers should be a little bit less efficient but hardly impossible.
Agree. The point is not if energy usage is good or bad. Energy usage is limited by the second law of thermodynamics. This means the last paragraph is an optimistic economic solution proposal, which is unfortunately not feasible due to the laws of physics. The following dialog elaborates on this point:
Increasing world energy consumption by 1 million TOE is easy with fossil fuel, but pretty hard with clean energies.
We consume ~35B barrels a year vs 5B to 7B barrels discovered. Energy scarcity is coming. For now, shares of fossil fuel are still increasing in global consumption (thanks to china and coal). Gas and oil will probably decline faster than increase of clean energies. Not because of wars, price or climate policies, but because of reserves.
Keep increasing consumption of fossil fuel is 1) not sustainable 2) not compatible with global warming. Climate change is very challenging for poor country.
In most scenarios, humanity will tend to reduce energy consumption and go green.
Have you read "Where Is My Flying Car?" Part of the books answer to its eponymous question is that we stopped increasing our energy production*. The author analyses why, and concludes it was mostly due to poor incentives arising from institutional design and public sentiment which began demanding more regulation for ideological reasons. I mostly buy the books arguement, which dovetails with the point you're making in your article.
*If you look at what tech we should have by now, based off of predictions by Clarke and other futurists, then you mostly see the digital tech being on track and the physical tech nowhere in sight.
I understand it is just a metaphor, but flying cars were so popular in science fiction due to linear thinking and failure of imagination. What we have accomplished in personal technology is much more impressive. Mass personal flying cars are a terrible idea anyway. Traffic regulation would be a nightmare, accidents and fatalities would be rife, transportation costs including fuel costs would be immense, etc.
It's actually much easier to do traffic regulation in the air (3D, no obstacles above terrain features, easy to locate other traffic based on GPS and P2P radio comms). The tech for end-to-end flight automation exists and is in practical use.
Fuel-wise... small aircraft can actually get comparable MPG to cars, assuming modern engine technology (NOT the engines from 60s like Lycomings or Continentals... they still use magnetos) and modern aerodynamic design. (Otto Aviation's 8-seater transcontinental range airplane, Celera 500L, promise 18-25 mpg; even the 1960th design, 4-seater Cessna 172 gets around 17 mpg in cruise).
The reality of general aviation is that FAA regulation pretty much killed the industry - which is now stuck with decades-old technology due to ridiculous costs of certifying anything attached to an airplane. And don't get me started on the insanity of air-traffic control infrastructure.
It is a metaphor in so far as the author was questioning why personalised flying vehicles aren't common nowadays. He considers the points you make, and finds that they mostly don't stand up as an arguement against except for the last point i.e. energy costs would be high, so you need cheap energy.* Quite naturally, he then asks why we got off the Henry Adams curve.
It is interesting that you mention that personal tech is much more impressive than flying cars. From one perspective, the book is about why the world of "atoms" hasn't progressed as much as the world of "bits" (which I think is what you call "personal technology"). Why don't we even have flying cars, let alone moonbases or massive, beautiful cities or all the other marvels we were promised? Was it really inevitable that computers would produce all the modern day miracles?
*Other problems, in decreasing likelihood of a readily available solution, would be: graceful failure, vertical takeoff, energy density and noise. The former three are mostly solveable, with some trade-offs that could probably be resolved by engineering efforts. The latter doesn't have a solution in sight, but it doesn't seem like there's a fundamental barrier to a solution. Were these problems solved, then is seems likely that a great number of people would use the vehicles to e.g. visit far off family members in areas with poor transport, or to let them shift their homes further from city centers.
Some evidence for a market is the existence of the private-aircraft industry in the US. Admittedly, it isn't large right now. But the author argues that the size of the industry underestimates the potential size of the market, if one considers why private airplane usage crashed in the mid-late 20th century and didn't recover. According to the author, a few unlucky incidents like energy crisis drove several promising companies out of business and regulations thereafter crippled the industry, preventing its recovery. So a plausible counterfactual world without these regulations would have allowed the industry to recover to its previous size, around tenfold the present usage numbers if I recall correctly.
The book goes into great, rigorous detail on these topics, in particular that of flying vehicles. Unsurprising given that the author is an engineer. I highly recommend it.
Thank you, I’m going to have to give this book a read.
2kwh/day? what kind of refrigerator do you think that people in Rwanda would use? Maybe the people in US and UK should spend less energy
Why would energy flow to those in need instead of those with resources to pay for it?
If energy were cheap, who would be in the best position to benefit: those who use lots of energy, or those who use little?
Indeed, how could this asset class avoid the destiny of all other assets?
Curious to why you did not include nuclear in your list of energy sources at the end.
Fusion nuclear power is listed. The list seems to be one of things that don’t exist yet but may need to.
> Every square meter of land with a solar panel on it is a spot that can't be agriculture, housing, forest, or wetland.
Putting solar panels on the roofs of houses is common, though. I think you got slightly carried away with your rhetoric?
Very good point, thanks for pointing that out!
Also, land covered by wind turbines can still be used for things like farming, farming between the turbine towers should be a little bit less efficient but hardly impossible.
Agree. The point is not if energy usage is good or bad. Energy usage is limited by the second law of thermodynamics. This means the last paragraph is an optimistic economic solution proposal, which is unfortunately not feasible due to the laws of physics. The following dialog elaborates on this point:
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist/
or deserts or waters
Thank you for writing this. Far too many people seem to think energy usage, itself, is bad.
Thanks for this encouragement. I really appreciate it!
80% of world final energy is fossil fuel.
More energy is not bad, but let's start by going green first.
Do you think there are any tradeoffs involved with such a restriction?
Increasing world energy consumption by 1 million TOE is easy with fossil fuel, but pretty hard with clean energies.
We consume ~35B barrels a year vs 5B to 7B barrels discovered. Energy scarcity is coming. For now, shares of fossil fuel are still increasing in global consumption (thanks to china and coal). Gas and oil will probably decline faster than increase of clean energies. Not because of wars, price or climate policies, but because of reserves.
Keep increasing consumption of fossil fuel is 1) not sustainable 2) not compatible with global warming. Climate change is very challenging for poor country.
In most scenarios, humanity will tend to reduce energy consumption and go green.
Interesting concepts. Thanks for explaining new ideas