Topic: Energy
Topics relating to energy (fossil fuels, alternative sources of energy) in some way.
Manned Space Exploration Is Bullshit
Posted in Tech
on April 21st, 2012 by
Stephen DeGrace
Topics:
Science Fiction,
Science,
Energy,
Space
What made me think about this was seeing Elon Musk interviewed on the Colbert Report the other week. He said that he wanted to get into "important problems", as he said later, "One was the Internet, one was clean energy, and one was space," to quote Wikipedia, which is just about a direct quote of his comments on the show. Musk is the CEO of SpaceX, a private space exploration company, as well as Tesla Motors, makers of what is considered the world's first modern, commercially viable electric car. He made his fortune from PayPal. So he succeeded in having a foot in all three camps, but in choosing space exploration as the next place to focus his energy, I feel like he chose a vanity project over doing something really important. Space exploration is just not important to the future of humanity, and manned space exploration is just a gigantic waste.
The Limits of Climate Disaster
Posted in Unfounded Speculation
on February 27th, 2012 by
Stephen DeGrace
Topics:
Crystal Ball,
Science,
Energy,
Climate Change
The record will show that I am certainly not a climate change denier. However, I think that many scenarios of global warming make unwarranted assumptions about the rate of increase of green house gas levels in the atmosphere and hence don't paint a realistic picture of the future. A prime example of this genre, but by no means exceptional, is Under a Green Sky by Peter D.Ward, which I've just finished reading for the second time. I don't have any problem with the greenhouse extinction theory he describes, which is brilliant and convincing, but I have a problem with the way he extrapolates it into the future.
A Relevant Program for the Left
Posted in Personal Miscellany
on February 21st, 2012 by
Stephen DeGrace
Topics:
Politics,
Energy
The Left has not been really relevant in a long time. The Left has been completely routed since the fall of Communism, impotent and pushed into niches on the edges of society with no popular appeal. Contrasted with a potent and virile (if increasingly vile and loathsome) Right, the Right's accusations of milquetoast centrist politicians like Obama having an "extreme Left" agenda is bitterly amusing. The closest things we have seen to a resurgence of the Left as a political force with mainstream political relevance has been anti-globalization protests, which have drawn mostly disgust from the broader public who are uncomprehending and indifferent to the movement's beliefs and goals. In fact, even these resurgences are plagued by a perception and/or reality that they are united by nothing more than a common spirit and have no coherent ideology or program. However, I can think of at least one coherent and plausible program from a mainstream perspective that could be proposed based on an analysis of the anti-globalization Left.
"Ethical Oil" by Ezra Levant
Posted in Personal Miscellany
on September 4th, 2011 by
Stephen DeGrace
Topics:
Reviews,
Politics,
Energy
This weekend I read the book Ethical Oil: The Case for Canada's Oil Sands by Ezra Levant. I have complicated feelings about Ezra Levant, and I was certainly of two minds about buying this book. On one hand, it's an interesting topic. On the other hand, it's Ezra Levant, someone who I view as trying to inject the Canadian body politic with the same poison that's killing the United States an inch at a time à la Fox News, and that's not something I want to support financially. In Levant's favour, when it comes to the civil liberties and journalistic freedoms which make public dissent possible, Ezra is not just a cynical ideologue playing for his team first, last and only; he is the real deal, willing to stick up for anyone's rights, even people he doesn't agree with. What clinches it for me was the fact that he was the only person with a media outlet (when he ran the Western Standard magazine) who had the sheer balls to publish the Danish "Mohammed Cartoons." Furthermore, he was hauled before the Alberta Human Rights Commission as a consequence of doing so, winding up out of pocket something like a hundred grand to defend himself, and succeeded in staring them down. It is ultimately in honour of that swinging pair and that single, decisive act to defend freedom of speech in Canada from religious oppression that I threw a few bucks his way, and now a few links, too, via giving my impressions of his book.
Synthetic Fuels
Posted in Unfounded Speculation
on May 8th, 2011 by
Stephen DeGrace
Topics:
Crystal Ball,
Energy
Human survival at our present population level absolutely requires vast reserves of energy, to produce and transport food for our immense population if for no other reason. Particularly if we want to maintain anything like a comfortable and pleasant lifestyle for significant numbers of people, affordable and plentiful energy is a must. While there is a lunatic fringe in geology which proposes that oil is being continuously generated in the earth by microorganisms and essentially limitless, and others who favour an abiogenic origin of petroleum and much higher reserves available than conventional geology predicts, the safe money is on the hypothesis that fossil fuels are a finite resource, and that further, in the case of conventional oil, we are actually at or near a peak in production. Hence, curiosity about what, if anything, humanity will do when fossil fuels become scarce enough that running our civilization on them is prohibitively expensive leads one to the consideration of synthetic fuels.
Finding A Way Through
Posted in Unfounded Speculation
on December 29th, 2009 by
Stephen DeGrace
Topics:
Crystal Ball,
Energy
There is simply no way to avoid a massive human die-off in the coming century without maintaining a high-energy technological civilization. In the long run, of course, human survival with any semblance of a decent standard of living depends on there being a lot less humans. Nine billion human beings is simply too great a strain on the earth's carrying capacity for us to get away with it for very long (and that's making the possibly unfounded assumption that we can get away with it at all). But we would like to get to a sustainable place the painless way, by having less babies and waiting for the old folks to die off on their own. Since that is likely a tall order, we need to be thinking very seriously about how we're going to manage the relatively short term of the next fifty or a hundred years or so.
Global Warming, Oil, and American Supremacy
Posted in Unfounded Speculation
on December 15th, 2009 by
Stephen DeGrace
Topics:
Crystal Ball,
Energy
I recently read a couple of very interesting books. Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller: Oil and the End of Globalization by Jeff Rubin (blog) is about our rapidly diminishing capacity to keep up with demand for oil and its consequences for the world economy. The other, Climate Wars by Gwynne Dyer, is a frank and realistic assessment of the global strategic challenges posed by global warming. The topics of these books are heavily interrelated, but each has its particular concentration. I believe that a synthesis of the arguments presented by these authors leads to some interesting and disturbing conclusions about our future.