A Youtube exchange with a techno optimist

 Recently on the Youtube channel Friendly Jordies run by Jordon Shanks, an Australian comedian I posted this comment.

Hydrogen power is a non starter. Why? Because you have to make the hydrogen and that is energy sucking in a world where energy is going to become a lot tighter. What is the source of hydrogen? Most from natural gas, which is mostly CH4, or methane. A fossil fuel and that is not very good. Besides you would yield less energy from the hydrogen from NG than you would by using the NG as an energy source directly. Once the H is stripped what happens to the C of the molecule? Thus liberated it takes to dance with with nearest O2 to form what we know as CO2. On top of that NG is a finite resource. Fail on the climate front. The other source of hydrogen is from water, H2O via electrolysis. VERY energy hungry and VERY expensive. Will not fuel an economy but we drown it in overheads. Another fail. Hydrogen energy is really another form of hopium. Moral of the story is that climate action requires downsizing energy, any energy, clean, dirty, finite or renewable, and that necessarily means downsizing the economy. A bitter pill to swallow indeed. But we will be dragged kicking and screaming all the way there. In the end physics will give us no choice. 

This set an exchange between myself and another commenter by the handle of godamid. as follows. The URL in question was https://youtu.be/agl-Y6qHUjw



Hydrogen power is a non starter. Why? Because you have to make the hydrogen and that is energy sucking in a world where energy is going to become a lot tighter. What is the source of hydrogen? Most from natural gas, which is mostly CH4, or methane. A fossil fuel and that is not very good. Besides you would yield less energy from the hydrogen from NG than you would by using the NG as an energy source directly. Once the H is stripped what happens to the C of the molecule? Thus liberated it takes to dance with with nearest O2 to form what we know as CO2. On top of that NG is a finite resource. Fail on the climate front. The other source of hydrogen is from water, H2O via electrolysis. VERY energy hungry and VERY expensive. Will not fuel an economy but we drown it in overheads. Another fail. Hydrogen energy is really another form of hopium. Moral of the story is that climate action requires downsizing energy, any energy, clean, dirty, finite or renewable, and that necessarily means downsizing the economy. A bitter pill to swallow indeed. But we will be dragged kicking and screaming all the way there. In the end physics will give us no choice.
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Peter Gregory Kelly
 @godamid  I would have to respectfully disagree that the amount of energy we use is not important. Everything we do depends on the amount of energy we use. Humans use as much energy in a year as falls on earth in an hour. Sounds fine until you think exponentially. There are about 8,000 hours in a year, close enough to. If energy use increases by 3.5 % a year then the doubling time is 20 years (70/3.5). 8,192 is 2^13 doubling times, or 260 years before the entire earth surface, oceans and all would have to be planked out with solar panels (even if there were enough raw materials which there certainly is not). This means no solar energy for the other organisms and species we share the planet with. Make H from renewable energy creates another major user of energy and saps the economy and the amount you can make is limited. End of the day we can not grow. Growth is over or we are over. The energy making hydrogen could be better used elsewhere and that means accepting a lower standard of living.
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Peter Gregory Kelly
​ @godamid  Several points. First, I remember when I was in high school in the 1970s fusion was "30 years away". Fast forward, lots of hopium and hypeium stories later, no fusion 50 years later. Just as supersonic air travel for the masses. Well really didn't happen except for an interval for the gods above the masses. Fusion is the energy source of the future and always will be. I am old enough to be have been able to witness an inflection point in "onward ever upward march of technology" and let's all sing the old school song yadda yadda yadda. Even Moores Law is slowing down and will halt in a decade of so. There are hypeium stories of quantum computers. Good luck with keeping a near 0 degrees K conditions somewhere in your house. Interesting but so Concorde. Your population stat is dated. the global population was 6 billion in 2000. Today it is nearer 8 billion. In my mother's life (born 1924 the world's population has doubled twice from 2 billion to nearly 8 billion. Since the industrial revolution the world population has doubled 3 times from 1 billion to nearly 8 billion from 1800 to today. What allowed the population to boom so in 200 years? Fossil fuels. First coal which allowed rapid cheap transport of produce and later oil and natural gas. That means fertiliser for growing food. Without fossil fuels there would be no 8 billion people. Oil peaked in November 2018. What do we have? Food shortages. We are past #PeakOil and the population growth, which inflected as long ago as the 1970s, will reverse mirror the first half of the age of oil and fossil fuels generally. Sad but true. Very tragic but overdosing on hopium doesn't fix anything. You describe how we need increasing amounts of energy for technology. What is the effect? As you imply every problem is solved by throwing more energy at it. First it is sourced from once only finite supply of fossil fuels, but also from the non human sector of the biosphere. That means mass extinctions of species. More for us and less for everything else. It's a zero sum game. We have started the 6th great extinction event since the Cambrian and it may well take us with it. You almost get it when you said what "I am proposing" can not support our large population. That is the point I am making. However, ultimately using more or less energy is out of our hands and up to nature. Downsizing is going to be forced on to us whether we like it or not. Much better to go there voluntarily and softly then to be dragged there through war, starvation, hysteria, paranoia, scape goats and schisms within and between nations. Th war in Ukraine is only a hint of how bad things can get. Access to energy is figuring in that conflict. Unfortunately for us the strategy chosen seems to be "last man standing". Lastly you mentioned life expectancy. Did you know that life expectancy had been declining even before covid? Not yet in Australia but certainly in the US. And the easy gains in LE where saving a child grants 50 or 60 more years of life are now the hard to come by and very expensive medicine to grant 5 or 10 years of a lower quality life extension of an aged and sick person. In fact it can be said the life expectancy increases in the last 5 decades have not been won by keeping people healthy for longer but by keeping people sick for longer, such such the extended life is a poor quality extensions. We may also be approaching #PeakLifeExpectancy. It could be that baby boomers like myself will have the longest life spans before and after us. Sorry, us boomers took everything and left younger generations with the mess. When I was younger I used to believe in an "onward upward march" of technology to solve all our problem but from learning I have seen that our civilisation is an interval and will not last forever. Just like previous civilisations we believe we are the final consummation I suggest you read William Catton's "Overshoot" or the Club of Rome's "Limits to Growth". Contrary to the popular notion that the LTG predictions were wrong, their W3 model actually models closely to what has happened in 50 years. Finally I will address motives for techno optimism. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross described 5 stages of grief, denial, anger, sadness, bargaining and acceptance. There is certainly plenty of denial of climate change and peak oil. To me though techno optimism seems to mark the bargaining stage of grief for our way of life which will certainly change.
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godamid
 @Peter Gregory Kelly  ok, parsing all that was an effort. Fusion prospects aren't hopium. Keep yourself current on developments in the industry - this last two years has seen significant milestone breakthroughs in fusion development. The rest of your answer implies your answer to my question is that you would be happy to see a reduction in all three metrics of technology, population size and life expectancy. It's always the way with you guys. You actually are the cause of the problem. You presided over the inaction during the 70's, 80's and 90's - and now you want the newer generations to make the sacrifices you didn't. Sorry, no deal. You need to make the sacrifices you are asking others to, or come up with a better solution.
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Peter Gregory Kelly
​ @godamid  I have been following developments in fusion for longer than you. Not just fusion but tech seems to be reaching diminishing returns on investment in effort. Each "G" in phone returns fewer extra benefits and more hype. Let's take the first 60 years of air travel. From the first powered flight less than the length of a 747 or A380. Fast forward 60 years. In 1963 we had commercial jet travel with the expectation of supersonic in the 1970s. Fast forward to 2023, next year, for which 2022 will be a good analogue. Today we travel at the same speed as jets in 1963 except for the interval of supersonic travel for an interval but only for the elites. The electronics have improved and the flight engineer has been retired, and jumbos like the 747, A380 and briefly the DC10 but basically air travel has not changed much in the 2nd half of aviation as in the first. I do not want a lower life expectancy but facts are facts and they do not care for what you care. It looks like #PeakLifeExpectancy is going to be a thing. It is in the USA, not yet in my country Australia but that may change too. This was so even before covid. But I can hear you asking "What about all the new medical breakthroughs you hear about on TV all the time?". 9 out of 10 end up going nowhere or they are overhyped. Very often the "new wonder drug" is the old molecule of an older out of patent drug with an atom tweaked and viola, a new drug which can be patented for 20 years. The only exception I can think of in recent years is immunotherapy for cancer such which served Jimmy Carter well. Long story short, the medical business model today is not keeping people healthy for longer but keeping people sick for longer, and still in need of drugs. That is the pivot on which life expectancy has increased in the last few decades, except that is finding limits. You want increasing population and energy utilisation but there is something you need to know. Neither is sustainable. You need to learn to think exponentially, something I mentioned in my last reply. I will give an example applying to energy soon. Humans are part of the eco system. Growth is not compatible with eco balance. In the context of ecology "growth" is know as a plague or in your body as cancer. It is NOT healthy to the wider containing system. Take the much hoped for K1, K2 and K3 levels of civilisation. K1 uses about 10^16 to 10^17 watts with humans currently using 10^13 watts. K2 uses about 4 X 10^26 watts. K3 using about 4 X 10^37. Let's assume a 3.5% growth in utilisation. A good number historically and it divides into 70 neatly. It means a 1,000 fold increase in energy every 200 years. 2^10 = 1024. Say 200 years to reach K1. Pretty close to my solar panel example, at least an order of magnitude. About 600 years from K1 to K2. Allow another rough 800 years from K2 to K3. But here is a problem. K3 is the energy of an entire galaxy and that means a civilisation travelling through space faster than light. So growth will stop at some point whether we like it or not. And then our own extinction. To survive as a long term species we need to live in balance with nature, not overwhelm nature or "conquer" it or see it as the "enemy. Always remember the legend of Icarus. It has a message for today.
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Peter Gregory Kelly
​ @godamid  I just showed how exponential growth does NOT allow for long term survival. I showed you the maths. You said I did not show evidence but you have not refuted the maths. Tell me where my maths is wrong. Please. Where does my working of K1.2 and 3 fall down? OK here is a video by Numberphile estimating the number of particles in the observable universe which later goes on the estimate how long itwill take for the biological human race to constitute the entirety of the observable universe. The answer is at an annul population growth of 1.11% (now a little lower since the making of the video but the principle is the same) is 8,604 years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpj0E0a0mlU The first law of growth is that growth of any quantity is not sustainable. This is a slide show I made about population growth. https://www.slideshare.net/PeterKelly139/the-maths-human-population-growth Please tell me where my maths is wrong. I suspect that like many people, my younger self included, you have grown accustomed to an abnormal situation as though it is normal and to cope with the end of the party you have opted for techno bargaining, just as I used to. I suggest you watch a video by Al Bartlett called Arithmetic Population and Energy at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI1C9DyIi_8 The case I have laid out is shocking to the core as it was for me but it is well supported. You need to drop anthro-chauvinism if you are to see the bigger picture objectively.
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Peter Gregory Kelly
​ @godamid  I should have also asked you to substantiate your assertion of "increasing returns" from technology and show where my counter examples are wrong. You did not do this. "Stagnant" is a negative loaded term. I prefer the term "stable". The fastest way to species suicide is exponential growth as I showed with my maths. I call it harmony, being in balance with the eco-system, not suicide. I am sorry, but the party is over for easy growth. It was predicated on a once only endowment of fossil fuel energy, the volume of which can not be repeated. Just as the historic population graph shows an upward swing coinciding with the age of fossil fuels so the decrease of population will reflect its decline, for geological reasons rather than green alternatives. There is no green way of producing fertiliser to feed as many people as exist on earth. Therefore population will decrease. We are seeing drop offs in food production, now as I type. Remember we have probably hit #PeakOil in November 2018. Indonesia is no longer exporting vegetable oil, a portent of more of the same in the coming years. I suggest you read almost anything by Richard Heinberg. I'd recommend his latest book "Power". I would also recommend "Geo Destinies" by Walter Youngquist.
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godamid
 @Peter Gregory Kelly  current food production can support over 9 billion people - we have centuries of efficiency gains to make in distribution, storage and usage. Exponential growth will be bad if we stay on the planet - but we won't. Technology improving as it matures is a no brainer. We just don't buy things that are not at least as good as what they replace. All technology improves as it matures - name one that hasn't. Anyway, you won't convince me because you don't have a pathway to get to your dream. It requires people dying, a loss of standards of living and life expectancy. You know the easy bits but haven't provided the answer as to how you manage those three terrible scenarios that MUST come from reducing energy use.
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Peter Gregory Kelly
 @godamid  Citation needed for the 9 billion figure. We can not feed nearly 8 and we are experiencing food shortages as I type. We are passed #PeakOil and fertiliser depends on fossil fuels. At least you admit that exponential growth is not possible indefinitely. You fail to recognise that exponential growth is what growth is all about. "..., you won't convince me because..." This strikes me as a faith based statement. You can always convince me I am wrong. I am NOT advocating death, poorer lives or lower life expectancy any more than Cassandra wanted what she could see. I am predicting that this will happen. I based my prediction on the assumption that long term survival depends on living in harmony in the eco system. Growth is not harmony. It is akin to a cancer. More of us means less of everything else. It's a zero sum game. We are dependent on the planet but instead we have waged war on it. The most aggressive cancers are also the shortest lived. I can go on to present other arguments for you to consider but I fear such effort will fall on to sterile ground. Your faith in technology is quaint but naïve, as naïve as it is unnuanced. I have offered you the red pill but you have opted for the blue pill. I can not do anything about that. Only you can come out of a slumber.
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godamid
 @Peter Gregory Kelly  search "Current global food production is sufficient to meet human nutritional needs in 2050 provided there is radical societal adaptation". In 2050 they estimated the population to be 9.1 billion. The problem with feeding the world now is capitalism - it's cheaper to throw out the food then to distribute it to where it is needed.
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godamid
 @Peter Gregory Kelly  separating out your "faith based argument" accusation because it is clearly the opposite. I need you to tell me how you will reduce the world's population, it's living standards and its life expectancy in order to achieve your goal of energy reduction. Until you come up with a method you don't have a solution.
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Peter Gregory Kelly
 @godamid  On what do you base this assertion? Fertiliser = fossil fuels = shortage.
Peter Gregory Kelly
 @godamid  I do not want a lower life expectancy. I am predicting that this will happen. Nothing need to be done. I have no plan for and neither would I want one. We need not choose a lower population. The coming shortage of food will impose it. Fossil fuels, geology = less less fertiliser in the future = less food. To increase living standards how much more biosphere do you want to take away from the non human sector of the biosphere? More of us means less of everything else. But our numbers are moderated by fossil fuel access, and fossil with a high energy return on energy invested (EROEI). The choice we face with population is a soft voluntary reduction in population or we can wait passively for the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse. Add to this soil degradation from growing food for smaller numbers of people, climate change to fertiliser shortage we have painted ourselves into a corner. The irony is that by making more room for people by pushing everything else into extinction will reduce our own numbers against our wishes.
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godamid
 @Peter Gregory Kelly  Australia in particular has very poor soil, and are heavily dependent on fertiliser. However, we understand the geopolitical risk that puts upon us so we are developing sustainable farming techniques to decouple from our reliance on those imports. There are alternative sources of hydrogen and nitrogen, so this is a legislative issue again. Get rid of fossil fuels and you still have super phosphate and urea. To make it even easier to transition, you need new technology - some of which will use more energy to produce than natural gas derived ferts. So you have given an example that needs better technology and more energy to replace the currently profitable fossil fuel driven production. But that's ok, we can grab some of that excess sun energy to do the work. My solution improves the outcome for the planet by replacing a need for fossil fuels, and allows people to continue a decent existence without asking them to sacrifice themselves. I don't know what your solution is. Cut back on what? Wait for 3 billion people to jump off the mortal coil? Ban the use of electricity? While you dither with those answers, fertilisers are still being made out of natural gas because we have 6 billion mouths to feed.
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godamid
 @Peter Gregory Kelly  hmm, I'm not sure you understand the implications. Either that or you don't care. It won't be affluent westerners that pay the price. It will be the people who already have the smallest footprints. We know that will be the case because it already is the case.
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Peter Gregory Kelly
 @godamid  On a global scale there is no way we can sustain the global population without fossil fuels for fertiliser. Our population has grown because of it. Hydrogen from water electrolysis is an energy intensive means. In the past every problem has been solved by throwing more energy at it. The problem today is that we can only solve the problems in the decades ahead by using LESS energy. The easiest path with the least energy is with fewer people. There is no problem that is not made easier with fewer people. An increasing population is NOT normal. It is an abbreviation. It is growth and growth is incompatible with ecological sustainability. We are like rabbits or cane toads without moderation, but ultimately we will moderate ourselves or nature will do it for us. That is the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse. The problem is not insufficient technology or not enough. The problem is that no matter how much we have we exhaust that and want more. In this technology becomes an enabler of ecological dysfunction, like supplying an alcoholic with more alcohol. Technology is the brewery of future hangovers.
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Peter Gregory Kelly
 @godamid  I do care. We can take control of our out of control disaster and power down gently or allow the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse to do this for us. We have already wasted 50 years of opportunities and the Club of Rome's W3 model is the one currently most closely tracking what is happening today. Read "Limits to Growth".
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Peter Gregory Kelly
 @godamid  The problem with with "Technology allows efficient use of energy" is the Jevon's Paradox in which efficiency is eaten up with increased use. Yes you are right that if every person person lived an agrarian lifestyle we would be worse off and here you almost, but not quite get it. The earth can not support our present number of people. But u=you are resistant from following that fact to the next logical conclusion that ecologically our numbers WILL reduce, not should or ought or ought not BUT WILL. Our choice is not whether to reduce population but whether the inevitable reduction will be voluntary and soft or involuntary and brutal. Think of the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse. The fast way out of the gene pool is growth, growth in population, growth in the economy or growth in energy utilisation. A long term future for our species depend on stability, not growth. Remember the most aggressive cancers are also the shortest lived and our species is to the biosphere a cancer...
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Peter Gregory Kelly
 @godamid  The first law of sustainable is that growth is not sustainable. The biosphere is not growing. We are. More of us means less of everything else. It's a zero sum game. A biosphere with a cancerous species is not a healthy biosphere. I have not skirted around death and suffering. You have by proposing a course of action which will lead to maximum death and suffering. I am saying that if we remain growth centred we will head straight to extinction. Every cancer tumour dies off after killing its host. I have not given up. I have realised that humanity can not both grow AND preserve the environment because we are a part of that environment. I have explained the maths of exponential growth and why it is not sustainable but you hand waved it away as though you can have growth which is not exponential. You never explained how that works. Have you checked out any of the references I have given you or are you determined "not to be convinced". For my part I can be convinced because I do not have a dogmatic belief system. Finally give some pause to the Fermi Paradox. If the galaxy could give rise to lots of civilisations in such a long period of cosmic then where are they? Limits Godamid I suggest. Exhaustion I suggest Godamid. Or voluntarily remaining low key and surviving a long time. Fermis Paradox suggests that gang busters growth burns out quickly. If sustainable was a thing then where are the aliens who would surely have made their presence known by now?
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godamid
 @Peter Gregory Kelly  well that was condescending. You don't need to explain any sort of mathematics or the sciences to me, save yourself the time. The important thing about understanding the maths behind exponential growth is knowing when to apply it. And the human population does not grow exponentially. And the Fermi paradox is a device that smart guys use to get government funding. It's effectively meaningless with the data we have on its variables and our understanding of interstellar space and travel.
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Peter Gregory Kelly
 @godamid  No. we do not double our chances of survival by colonising another planet. First of all you need I may be guessing but a million or a billion times as much energy per person to keep them alive. You have a greater chance of extinction on another planet than on earth because you have to pay for ALL eco services, not just some of them. You have to MAKE the biosphere in which you live, something you do not have to do on earth. Instead we are busy destroying the biosphere. How much energy does it take to make a biosphere, terraforming? Much more than any resulting colonisation would ever use. As we run down the new planet home we would benefit from LESS energy than went into making it. There is no such thing as perfect efficiency. Combusting coal you only get about 30% of the embodied energy. Thermodynamic and entropy. Do consider Fermi's Paradox. It is telling. There is NO, zero nada zilch "environmentally clean technologies" possible and coincident with growth of any type. The definition of "environmentally clean" is a state of NO GROWTH because if we grow we kill our host, like a cancer. Take palm oil. To satisfy a larger population you need more palm oil for all sorts of things. Fewer forests, higher CO2, fewer species. The exact opposite of what you claim is "environmentally clean". As an example consider reindeer in an eco balanced system. They will survive indefinitely. Now take the reindeer on St Matthews Island. All gone now. That is because they were an introduced species on St Matthews Island. Lots to eat and no predators.. The reindeer ate themselves into extinction. Your advice to the reindeer would be "You have to grow your way out of your problems". Reindeer do not grow their way out of shortages problems and neither do humans. Why is this so hard for you to understand? We are part of the eco system we are destroying by growing. Why is this so hard for you to understand? Again. it is obvious that long term survival depends on stability in energy utilisation, economic activity and population. Extinction is most assured by growth. I have shown you the maths but you are blind. I can not help that. Only you can rise from that. Only you can educate yourself. I used to think in your way but then I took the blinkers away from my eyes. I can see clearly now.
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Peter Gregory Kelly
 @godamid  It is true that since 1970s that population has slowed in percent rate by not in absolute terms. Why did this happen. The pivotal point seems to be 1973 which may have been itself pivoted on the 1970 US peak in conventional oil production as predicted by M King Hubbert. That made the first oil crisis in 1973 possible, followed by 1979. From that point in many parts of the world total world oil production growth slowed from about 7% a year to just a few percent a year. Population growth slowed accordingly, in lock step. Population is a function of energy availability, as I said. In 2018, November total oil production peaked, even before covid reduced demand. That all oil, convention and unconventional. What do you think is happening to fertiliser production. Exactly as predicted. There is simply NO WAY, none, zero, nada, zilch, way to produce as much fertiliser as in the past. Therefore the food shortages we are now seeing. The Fermi Paradox is only "meaningless" data because it leads to conclusions you rather not arrive at. A lot like creationists see genetic data as "meaningless" and for the same reasons. Still I ask the question, "Where are they". A question crying out for an answer.
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Peter Gregory Kelly
​ @godamid  You misunderstand the Fermi Paradox. At a slow speed the spread of an alien civilisation over 100 thousand lightyears over a time period of billions of years. We would expect many such contacts if there are at least thousands of such civilisation lasting into deep cosmic time. That this does not happen suggests that growth does NOT continue, or it suggests that growth is not pursued by other civilisations. Either they can NOT and soon burn themselves up in the attempt or do NOT. It is a conclusion you would rather not arrive at. I know your problem. You see humanity as split and distinct from the biosphere and do not actually see that the collective humanity is a PART of the biosphere. While we grow everything else in the biosphere MUST shrink. There is no other option in a system which is not growing. Behold, the 6th great extinction event since the Cambrian caused because collective humanity is growing. It's a zero sum game. We utilise ALL the energy and deny everything which also constitute the biosphere. We are a cancer on our host, the plant. Because this reply is already long, I will do a thought experiment about a space colonising civilisation and why it might not be viable and why it could be your worse dystopia in my next reply.
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Peter Gregory Kelly
​ @godamid  OK, let's imagine a space colonising civilisation because we can not sustain ourselves or guarantee long term survival on earth alone. Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos present 2 different models of what this might look like. Fist is the Bezos model of lots of space station housing a trillion people in space stations orbiting the earth. What is the template for this? Well the International Space Station which houses about 10 people or so in accommodation costing about $200 billion US. Well that's not a business model. Plus the dangers of cosmic rays and solar wind, plus the potential for Kessler Syndrome where one orbiting object collides with another creating more debris to destroy other craft turning the earth into a planet with rings of metal shrapnel. . Health is also impacted in numerous ways, including, but not limited to bone density and metabolic health. All of which has to be expensively alleviated with heroic technological interventions. Energy? A LOT of it coming from where? The average space station resident pays for this how? What is the Musk mode? His model is a colony on Mars with a city of 1 million by 2050. What is the template for this model. It is Antarctica. First explored on foot 100 years ago there is no permanent population there to this day, only a transient population of researchers. Mars is a million X easier to get to than Mars and you do not have to make the atmosphere when you arrive or. The earth's eco system supporting us here on earth has to be augmented, not manufactured from scratch. It takes 18 months to get to Mars and there is a window to leave earth only once every 2 years because of the relative positions of earth and Mars to each other in their orbits. It would be a heroic effort of trillions of dollars to get say 10 people to Mars, not counting the cost of all the pre drops before people. You would have to do 100,000 such trips, and in only 30 years, and only in 15 of those 30 years and only a window of a few of those 15 years. Space traffic control? Did I mention you have to bring an eco system with you because you can not eat Martian dusk or breathe Martian air? There is ice but the energy to melt it would be enormous. Is there deposits of tritium and deuterium needed for the fusion will in 2050 "will still be 30 years away"? Or uranium? Or will these have to come from earth or mined meteorites. Certainly not cheap and the power bill for each of those 1 billion residents of that Martian city would be horrific because all the eco services given to us on earth for free, no charge, has to be made, and paid for. What economic model would enough of the billionaire incomes needed to sustain a human city on Mars. Then there are the health effects of 1/3 gravity, space born radiation and the psychological deprivation of never seeing a blue sky, never feeling wind on your face and never running in bare feet in sand, of always being in some sort of bubble, of being "the boy in a bubble" forever and never being able to return to earth because your bones would break, or having to lay horizontal for months if you did return before being able to walk on earth. The reality, as opposed to the Star Trek fantasy, is that no one has walked on another solar system body for nearly 50 years, December 1972 when Gene Cernan and Harrison Smidt of Apollo 17 were the 6th and last Apollo crew to land on the moon. Compare that to Von Braun who first experimented with rockets in 1927 in what was the prototype for the V1 and V2 rockets with caused panic in London. 42 years later Neil and Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon in July 1969. So much for the "great acceleration" or the "law of increasing returns" yadda yadda yadda. So then let's think about terraforming. We put in a heroic technological effort to terraform Mars, increase its temperature, change its atmosphere. But radiation? You need an ozone layers and you get that from a decent size moon which could be Ceres pulled into orbit. The moon would also stabilise the pole wobble which is far more variable than earth's. You may be able to get some volcanic effects, important for really long term cycles, but probably not. And gravity, you can not do anything. So you MAY have a Mars which COULD be viable if earth is not, but I doubt it. What are the time periods? Could this be completed before humans on earth are extinct? Because if it can not then any humans on Mars would soon be extinct as well. Just think Antarctica's dependence on its umbilical chord for its human population. Now let's talk about the politics and economics of what I will called Bezos's Kessler Shrapnelville and Elon's city of Elonia. Obviously there is no way for the average citizen (?) to pay for this. Elon has come to the rescue with a "solution". You can go to Mars and pay off your debt. SPOILER: it will never be repaid. This then is interplanetary feudalism, forever peonage to Emperor Elon in his capital city of Elonia and his hierarchy space lords. You will subscribe to EVERYTHING, including your life support, subject to cancellation as outlined in the 1 million lines of terms and services. An absolute monarchy. If your service can e cut off you have no freedom. You didn't think making our own eco services, geoengineering and weather control were going to be free. On earth most eco services are free. We have to augment water services because of our numbers and pay for that. That's the story of progress. We pay for more and more of what use to be free eco services. Techno optimists also want us to pay for capturing carbon, something nature does for free except we have overwhelmed her capacity by our numbers. But more energy would be expended than would be yielded from such a terraformed utopia, and if the earth is any guide we would run it down quickly. Therefore eventually a need for interstellar space colonisation at interstellar distances. The difficulties multiply. But that becomes a trap. Humans would have to stay ahead of a sphere of entropy behind them of their own making. But is space rich enough to sustain such an expansion? Think of radioactive decay. If the percentage of fissile particles is too small you do not have critical mass, but only radioactive decay of a half life. Or a room of a mix or methane and oxygen. Below a certain level of methane there is no explosion but only something akin to an ember which snuffs out, no matter how "smart" the methane is meet all the challenges and difficulties in its path of ever onward expansion and glory forever and ever amen. Humans emerged because of a high energy order in the biosphere. We are an energy dissipative species returning energy to a more entropic state. The earth has extraordinary stores of high order energy and our purpose is to return it to entropy. When that is done, so are we. Over and out. Or we can decide to be a longer term species of the earth's eco system utilising energy at a far smaller rate and not open Pandora's Box.
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Peter Gregory Kelly
 @godamid  The absence of Santa Claus also doesn't mean Santa doesn't exist. Still we not have any signatures of the sort that any civilisation with 100 light years of earth would see of earth. Either such civilisations are short lived and burn out quickly or a civilisation lives low key into the long term. You are psychologically resistant to considering any views other then those which you are invested in. I have been generous enough to outline my case and you do not address any points I raise. I showed you the maths and you handwaved it away saying something like "growth doesn't have to be exponential. I asked you to explain and you did not. I pointed out examples of diminishing marginal returns on technology but you handwaved that away without explaining what was wrong with the examples. I brought up the apparent emergence of #PeakLifeExpectancy and you accused me of advocating for a shorter life expectancy. Talk about misrepresenting your opponent as a strawman. I have explained how growth in an ecosystem which is not growing is inherently unsustainable and more akin to a cancer. You have not addressed this or explained what is wrong with this analogy. Your replies to me have been long on faith such as "You'll never convince me" but short on substance. But only you can conquer you mental blocks to clear think. I can not do that for you. And of course you CAN convince me I am wrong. You just need substantive arguments.
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Peter Gregory Kelly
​ @godamid  You are right that life on earth will change and eventually go extinct. But humans, in any possible scenario will not see this, especially in the "grow to exhaustion" "solution" you proposed. Homo techno is, at his worse, a fast dissipater of energy, returning high order energy to a more entropic state. The harder we go at it, the sooner we will find extinction for ourselves and other species. I have pointed out how human life on another planet will go extinct and probably before our extinction on earth and how interplanetary and interstellar space colonisation will only result in an expanding sphere of entropy of our own making and that, subject to energy and resource availability we ourselves will be swallowed by that sphere in any case. But in this reply I am sensing something in you more obviously than in your other replies but something I find commonly in techno optimists. That is a utter utter utter dread of death, of yourself, everything you value, you species, everything. This is a pre hint of a grieving process which might only be in your pre conscious. This is what Ernst Becker called "Terror Management Theory" or more simply a fear of death. Wanting to "progress" is really a cover for a fear of death deep down. What do we find in the restaurant at the end of the universe to invoke the concept of Douglas Adams? We find the king of kings, the end of all ends, the heat death of the universe itself. King Entropy. Get use to it because he is the debt collector with a 100% recovery rate and he will recover both you and myself, eventually. I will tell you a fable. A man in a village got word from some others that Death was looking for him. Horrified, the man took flight, grabbed a few belongings, packed them and ran out of the gates of the wall surrounding the village, determined that Death will NEVER EVER find him. No, not him, not ever. Not at all. It's not happening. After some hours of running the man saw a stream of water and, feeling thirsty, took a break to quench his thirst. As he knelt down to cup a mouthful of water with his hands he saw out of the corner a creepy dark figure dressed in black clothes and looking like hell melted his face. The figure spoke up and said "Ah I have been expecting you to arrive and now that you have arrived I can take you away. By trying to outrun death the man found death. That's life. All life depends on dead life to sustain itself. There is no life without death. By running away from death we also run away from life and from ourselves. Humanity's collective horror of death has seen it cut itself off from the ecosystem which gives it life. By running from death humanity has also run away from life itself and only brought species extinction closer, and sooner, whether on earth or off in space. You see death inhabits even interplanetary, interstellar and inter galactic space. Unfortunately there is no life where one has run as far from life as possible in an attempt to escape death, only to find it there as well. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross described grief in 5 stages, being denial, anger, sadness, bargaining and acceptance. With global warming and peak oil there is of course plenty of denial. The other common reaction is bargaining and this is where techno optimism comes in. It is essentially the bargaining stage of grief. You will not be able to get past techno bargaining, such as space colonisation, geo engineering, carbon capture, EVs for every man, wind and solar and a million other ways of avoiding coming to terms with the grief at the coming loss of our way of life and all we value. BTW I agree with wind and solar, but not as business as usual, but as a transition to power down, just to make that clear.
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Peter Gregory Kelly
 @godamid  Being "smart" is not always an evolutionary advantage. Smartness is energy expensive. Sometimes an animal will have a higher chance of reproducing if their brain size is decreased. We have seen this in the fossil evidence of the ancestors of koalas. The ancestors of koalas were wombats with bigger brains but when your diet is hard to digest eucalyptus leaves and you spend 20 hour plus a day sleeping you don't need a big brain, so the koala downsized its brain. A big brain would take energy away from what is needed for leaf digestion. What confers "fitness" is not the same in every environment. It varies. The same applies to fur length. Long fur confers a survival advantage in a cold climate but such an advantage becomes a survival disadvantage in a hot climate. I would submit that there is evidence for Santa. Not good evidence, but evidence nonetheless. Evidence which falls away with more information. He is sighted everywhere in shopping centres and presents are left in his wake. Some parent may "claim" to be playing the role of "Santa" but that is because they are being processed by the omnipresent "spirit of Santa". As for Fermi, explain the non appearance of aliens, or signatures of them if in billions of years a single alien civilisation could have spread across the galaxy. Probability suggests it. The short existence of space colonising alien civilisations is suggested.
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Peter Gregory Kelly
 @godamid  Understanding death is not the same thing making peace with death as a part of life, a necessary part as there is no life without death. Mathematically there is a greater chance of long term survival if we live in balance with the ecosystem as a part of that ecosystem. Global warming and climate change are not themselves problems as effects of the REAL problem being ecological overshoot, that is, that humanity's collective footprint is too large for the ecosystem containing our species. Space colonisation is just an escape fantasy to avoid facing up to limits and realising that a growing humanity is historically normal, or sustainable. You talk as though humans and the biosphere are divorced entities, separate from each other, that we can grow without any effect on the ecosystem. But jump off this planet and you will only have to jump off the next planet and the next and the next, always running away and bargaining that THIS time we can be secure in some sort of immortality but you would only be grieving for what you can not have back, Your way, if it was possible, would only result in a frightening expanding sphere of entropy; always threatening to overtake and snuff you humanity, and a lot faster than living sustainably within an ecosystem on earth. Humanity will go extinct one day. All species go extinct. That is natural. Yes, all living things want to live but our problem is that humans are unmoderated. We have become essentially a plague species and we know what happened to the reindeer on St. Matthew Island. The will to life which works so well to animate the ecosystem in balance works against us in an ecosystem out of balance, almost as though nature has an inbuilt immune response system to combat dangerous cancerous tumours within her. Are we THAT cancer?

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