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Re: The Limits To Growth



dlj@inforamp.net (David Lloyd-Jones) writes:

> 
> bds@ipp-garching.mpg.de (Bruce Scott TOK ) wrote:
> 
> >I repeat my comment about energy stocks.  I note that it went unanswered.
> 
> Energy is not a stock, it's a flow.  Incoming sun is a high fraction
> of a horsepower per square yard.  Uranium and geothermal are both
> there for the next few billion years.  In due course we shall no doubt
> tap the solar wind.  In the meantime, we've got enough gas, oil, coal
> and peat to last us a few hundred years at an American scale of
> consumption, unlikely though that scale is to become general.
>  
> Not a problem.

But it is a problem. A major cause of misunderstanding in this debate
is whether you do the calculations based on the rest of the world wanting
an American (or European) scale of consumption. If you do allow for the
rest of the worlds' aspirations, then we don't have hundreds of years
worth of gas,oil,coal,etc; we can't build fission reactors fast enough
(to western safety standards, at least) and fusion will not be here
near fast enough. 

>                             -dlj.

-- 
Alastair McKinstry <alastair@ilo.dec.com>
Technical Computing Group, Digital Software, Ballybrit, Galway, Ireland
Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world
is either a madman or an economist - Kenneth Boulding, economist.



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