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from the my-solar-panels-are-covered-in-soot dept.
Ken_g6 writes:
Wired today reports on continued coal use around the world and efforts to promote carbon capture and storage (CCS).
Today coal produces more than 40 percent of the world's electricity, a foundation of modern life. And that percentage is going up: In the past decade, coal added more to the global energy supply than any other source. Nowhere is the pre-eminence of coal more apparent than in the planet's fastest-growing, most populous region: Asia, especially China.
Many energy and climate researchers believe that CCS is vital to avoiding a climate catastrophe. Because it could allow the globe to keep burning its most abundant fuel source while drastically reducing carbon dioxide and soot, it may be more important - though much less publicized - than any renewable-energy technology for decades to come. No less than Steven Chu, the Nobel-winning physicist who was US secretary of energy until last year, has declared CCS essential. "I don't see how we go forward without it," he says.
Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs projects that solar power will be cost-competitive with other electricity sources in the US by 2033. So will we build more coal plants or tear them down?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 01 2014, @04:24AM
The essay isn't bad, but it's not very fresh. It feels like something that would have been thought up in the 19th century.
I guess that if you're going to do some utopian thinking, you should be thinking "transhuman" style. Technology never is a magic fix, but it stirs things up in a way that merely satisfying wants does not. And here, I think we're on the verge of transforming ourselves in ways that completely obsolete most current systems of thought. For example, what makes you human when you can become physically indistinguishable from another species? Or become a vast machine (eg, the sci fi story of a thinking space ship or building)? What is possible when artificial life forms are indistinguishable from natural ones? When the concept of species, that billion year old artifact of all of life's evolution itself becomes obsolete? When it may be possible for you to outlive the Sun? And of course, there's the possibility of the "post-scarcity" society where providing for a person is so cheap, it's not worth billing them for it.
Then there's the expansion into space. Here, the author merely notes in his scenario that "UFO clubs" want it but are having some trouble getting the rest of society on board with any sort of space activities. It's just a hobby to him rather than the answer to things that are mostly technological in nature (such as sustainable societies, post scarcity economies, diversification of global level risks).
Currently, the world is about 200-500 milliseconds across. That's how long it takes for near light speed signals to transverse the fastest of the convoluted networks that span Earth's surface or by satellite from any point on the surface of the Earth to any other point (and it covers the International Space Station as well). At best, we may figure out how to communicate straight through the Earth, which could cut the time to the theoretical minimum of about 42-43 milliseconds. This is as small as humanity will ever get unless at some point everyone gets crammed into the state of Texas or some other small region on the Earth's surface.
Go into space and things get big and distant again. Not so good for WoW or other social things on the computer, but great for kicking up diversity of societies and making new things happen.