[p2p-research] [Open Manufacturing] Addressing Post-Scarcity Pitfalls

[Eugen Leitl]

On Tue, Jun 23, 2009 at 07:24:17PM -0500, Kevin Carson wrote:
> 
> On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 9:31 AM, Ryan Lanham<rlanham1963 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > Local consumers in most places cannot access wind or solar in reasonable
> > quantities to make personal production realistic or economical.

You're comparing apples and oranges. Wind doesn't scale well to small 
installations. Solar collectors do very well in small installations,
and PV does very well across the entire scale. Wind is hypervariable,
solar is moderately to low variable. You still need to buffer for
diurnal occlusion as long as you don't have a global grid, or solar
power satellites in line of sight.

> > I think small solar is a 3% at best sort of solution.  Centralized solar

Even current systems can easily produce excess, potentially considerable
excess for suburbia-like density in most locales.

> > turning turbines with hot air, etc. is more realistic.  Centralized power is

Carnot is never a good idea.

> > needed for industry and transportation and those aren't going away.  Yes,

Personal transportation is already included in residential PV, the needs
are negligible. Industry transportation and industry needs is industry's
own problem. They can buy power from small scale producers or large scale
producers, or build own facilities.

> > there will be efficiencies and savings, but there will also be growth.
> > People in the undeveloped world are not going to agree to be poor while the
> > West gets to be rich with lights, heat/AC, mobility, shipping, intensive
> > mining and mineral use, etc.

No disagreement there.

> > Nuclear has a huge future role.  It has to.  People who argue otherwise are
> > simply hurting the planet--killing it.  We need power.  Nuclear is going to

I disagree. There are multiple reasons why we should phase out old installations,
limit new installations until considerable R&D is sunk into novel reactor types
(unenrichened uranium and thorium in-situ breeders, in-situ fuel processing like
molten salt, etc). Even then, you would limit these to process heat and baseload,
and its fraction would asymptotically approach zero.

Meanwhile, we've got a bad case of zero-sum budget, and time is of essence. Frankly,
we no longer have time to fuck around. We've blown it in 1970s, now we need it yesteryear.

> > be the main source (period.)  We should fight to minimize it wherever we
> > can, but it is the main source.
> 
> I think far more important than the question of what energy sources
> will replace fossil fuels as the primary means for supplying energy
> demand, is the fact that energy demand itself doesn't have to be
> constant.  Far more important than either solar or nuclear, as a

It can shrink considerably short-term, but it will grow long-term.
As a transhumanist, I think in terms of 4 MT/s matterenergy flux as
our mid-term limit to growth.

> source of "new" energy, is reduced demand.  With relocalization of
> most industrial logistic chains, the widespread use of passive solar
> heating and cooling design, cogeneration with industrial waste heat,
> and a return to walkable communities and public transit, we could
> easily reduce total energy consumption by 80%.

That is very true. We can and must compensate a log of megawatts with negawatts.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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