Great article. Seems like the burgeoning energy demands of crypto & especially AI need a brief mention - or did my lying eyes miss it?
Also, we're going to need many energy guzzling desalination plants.
The notion they we were going to transform into a parsimonious, energy rationing planet of humans was always absurd. But it's increasingly clear that our energy demands will and must grow almost geometric just to accommodate the population.
Yes, I absolutely agree! A society like ours that expects energy consumption to decline is then shocked when a new energy-intensive tech like GPT comes along. That's not what our energy modelers had expected! So then everyone starts to worry about how GPT guzzles so much power and how its footprint is too large, etc. Well, what had you expected? That tech progress would suddenly stop in the 21st century?
This an excellent article. Somehow I missed it when it was published. I am impressed by your writing and clarity of thought.
By the way, welcome to the Progress Studies community! I have been a member for a few years now. I mainly focus on writing books, but I recently started writing on Substack as well.
Thanks a lot, much appreciated! I'll check out your post on the German energy transition (I expect we'll be in agreement!), and in the meantime I started following your work.
I would really love to hear your thoughts on my multi-part series on how we can turn Progress Studies into a real academic field of inquiry.
Most of the people in Progress Studies are not trained academics like us. I think those of us who understand the importance of definition, methodology, theory, etc need to start building the fundamentals that everyone else's work can build upon.
I would like this series to kick off a great discussion in the comments. Your comments would be much appreciated.
You are quite naive to think the environmentalist goal was ever a good faith effort to save us from a climate change disaster. The environmentalists are generally Malthusians who want to eradicate capitalism and reduce the global population. Thus, they overtly oppose any solution that permits continued economic growth and human prosperity while simultaneously reducing CO2 emissions. I am a climate realist. Climate change is real (it’s constantly changing ~ naturally) and we can do nothing about it. We can however, protect ourselves from a dangerous inhospitable climate using machines powered by reliable and cheap fossil fuels indefinitely until affordable and reliable technologies are developed to replace fossil fuels. Also, the claim that most people believe climate change is a serious threat to humanity may be true in Europe and Canada, but surveys consistently have shown it does not even rate in the top ten most important issues in the US or in the rest of the world.
Surveys reveal that people are driven by short-sighted personal interest. No surprise. That's why we elect leaders who hopefully are better informed and can consider long term threats and opportunities.
I don't agree that it is realism to delay the transition off of fossil fuel cars. It would never have happened (it's already a fait accompli) without a push from government. Frankly, it is happening now only because China followed a government plan for a decade that has put them in an enviable, commanding global market position.
I do share some of your view of the foolish goals of the environmentalists.
I understood (and I may well be wrong) that the advantage of gas over nuclear is that it is dispatchable or you can turn it on and off at will. Nuclear works well for baseload, but it isn't easily varied.
I'm still reading my way through your piece, but as a place to start, this caught my eye...
You write, "Don’t Look Up offers an—admittedly grotesque—version of a narrative about climate change that has been promulgated seriously by many people."
I love Don't Look Up for it's artistic courage. It took balls to make that movie, knowing how easily it could flop.
But I love the commentary about Don't Look Up less. The irony is overwhelming. Supposedly Don't Look Up is about climate change. Perhaps that was the writer's intention, I can't say. But...
While we're applauding ourselves for not being climate change deniers, we're almost completely ignoring another man made threat which could erase the modern world in the next hour. Want to know what that is? Look It Up.
While Don't Look Up is often portrayed as being over the top, it's really dead on accurate. We, almost all of us, almost the entire modern world, truly are... bat shit crazy.
We have a huge hair trigger gun aimed right down our collective throats, and we're BORED by it.
If the modern world was a single individual, we'd already be in the back of the ambulance in a straight jacket, on our way to the mental hospital.
I assume you mean nuclear war, right? The movie was definitely meant as an allegory for climate change, but I agree nuclear war is a much larger threat. But it doesn't have the inevitability of an asteroid or, in the film makers' minds, a climate catastrophe. As a matter of fact, I take nuclear proliferation to be the only potential argument against nuclear energy (but I reject it in the end). See this paper: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13347-022-00527-1
Let me know when people who actually know the science get to spend millions to advocate for the facts, rather than corporations who spent millions on suppressing the facts for decades.
Great article. Seems like the burgeoning energy demands of crypto & especially AI need a brief mention - or did my lying eyes miss it?
Also, we're going to need many energy guzzling desalination plants.
The notion they we were going to transform into a parsimonious, energy rationing planet of humans was always absurd. But it's increasingly clear that our energy demands will and must grow almost geometric just to accommodate the population.
Nuke or die.
Yes, I absolutely agree! A society like ours that expects energy consumption to decline is then shocked when a new energy-intensive tech like GPT comes along. That's not what our energy modelers had expected! So then everyone starts to worry about how GPT guzzles so much power and how its footprint is too large, etc. Well, what had you expected? That tech progress would suddenly stop in the 21st century?
This an excellent article. Somehow I missed it when it was published. I am impressed by your writing and clarity of thought.
By the way, welcome to the Progress Studies community! I have been a member for a few years now. I mainly focus on writing books, but I recently started writing on Substack as well.
Here is my take on energy policy:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/there-is-a-better-alternative-to
Thanks a lot, much appreciated! I'll check out your post on the German energy transition (I expect we'll be in agreement!), and in the meantime I started following your work.
Great!
I would really love to hear your thoughts on my multi-part series on how we can turn Progress Studies into a real academic field of inquiry.
Most of the people in Progress Studies are not trained academics like us. I think those of us who understand the importance of definition, methodology, theory, etc need to start building the fundamentals that everyone else's work can build upon.
I would like this series to kick off a great discussion in the comments. Your comments would be much appreciated.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/what-is-progress-studies
Good to see you on Substack, your work deserves a wider audience!
Spot on.
You are quite naive to think the environmentalist goal was ever a good faith effort to save us from a climate change disaster. The environmentalists are generally Malthusians who want to eradicate capitalism and reduce the global population. Thus, they overtly oppose any solution that permits continued economic growth and human prosperity while simultaneously reducing CO2 emissions. I am a climate realist. Climate change is real (it’s constantly changing ~ naturally) and we can do nothing about it. We can however, protect ourselves from a dangerous inhospitable climate using machines powered by reliable and cheap fossil fuels indefinitely until affordable and reliable technologies are developed to replace fossil fuels. Also, the claim that most people believe climate change is a serious threat to humanity may be true in Europe and Canada, but surveys consistently have shown it does not even rate in the top ten most important issues in the US or in the rest of the world.
Surveys reveal that people are driven by short-sighted personal interest. No surprise. That's why we elect leaders who hopefully are better informed and can consider long term threats and opportunities.
I don't agree that it is realism to delay the transition off of fossil fuel cars. It would never have happened (it's already a fait accompli) without a push from government. Frankly, it is happening now only because China followed a government plan for a decade that has put them in an enviable, commanding global market position.
I do share some of your view of the foolish goals of the environmentalists.
I understood (and I may well be wrong) that the advantage of gas over nuclear is that it is dispatchable or you can turn it on and off at will. Nuclear works well for baseload, but it isn't easily varied.
Perhaps I have misunderstood something?
I'm still reading my way through your piece, but as a place to start, this caught my eye...
You write, "Don’t Look Up offers an—admittedly grotesque—version of a narrative about climate change that has been promulgated seriously by many people."
I love Don't Look Up for it's artistic courage. It took balls to make that movie, knowing how easily it could flop.
But I love the commentary about Don't Look Up less. The irony is overwhelming. Supposedly Don't Look Up is about climate change. Perhaps that was the writer's intention, I can't say. But...
While we're applauding ourselves for not being climate change deniers, we're almost completely ignoring another man made threat which could erase the modern world in the next hour. Want to know what that is? Look It Up.
While Don't Look Up is often portrayed as being over the top, it's really dead on accurate. We, almost all of us, almost the entire modern world, truly are... bat shit crazy.
We have a huge hair trigger gun aimed right down our collective throats, and we're BORED by it.
If the modern world was a single individual, we'd already be in the back of the ambulance in a straight jacket, on our way to the mental hospital.
I assume you mean nuclear war, right? The movie was definitely meant as an allegory for climate change, but I agree nuclear war is a much larger threat. But it doesn't have the inevitability of an asteroid or, in the film makers' minds, a climate catastrophe. As a matter of fact, I take nuclear proliferation to be the only potential argument against nuclear energy (but I reject it in the end). See this paper: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13347-022-00527-1
Let me know when people who actually know the science get to spend millions to advocate for the facts, rather than corporations who spent millions on suppressing the facts for decades.