the thing is we are using nanobots in mice and they dont cause any heat problems so far

btw flying cars will be available from next year

the fda approved it

google it

 o shit! are people going to be able to take off from the road or will you have to head to an airport? I also imagine this will complicate things for airtraffic controllers. I think I am going to get my pilot's license now so i can grab one of these bad boys when they first come out.

Human-animals can not achieve singularity this quickly; they are too inept/daft/mundane/clueless/inefficient as is

 

facepalm yup i mixed it up haha

Yah, the whole flying car thing was intended as a commentary on the failings of trying to say what the future will be like in a bunch of decades. Really, even two decades ahead is kind of hard to get right. Hell's bells but in the late 60's, there were people in respectable positions saying that we would have men on Mars by the early 80's. Yah, that worked out well.

 

And I can still go into any corner store an go from frozen burrito to chowing down in about three minutes. Fuck but engineers were cooking food under unshielded radar gear in the 30's. How the ell could anyone have missed out on that?

 

However, back to my main point, Kurzweil has already decided on what will happen in the next half century, in what order and with certain specific years named for specific achievements. Sorry but I don't think that is likely given the history of “life in the future” predictions.

 

Sure, if we do not push the master reset button on our culture somehow, cool things will happen. The thing is what are those things and when will they happen? Trying to guess that far out is a probable belly flop of bad guessing.

 

I saw an article in the New York Times a couple of months ago about a guy somewhere in Europe who has a Blue Gene computer that he is using to run a simulation of a rat brain. He thinks that he can be running a close approximation of a human brain in about five years. Let's wait and see if he pulls it off but if he does, he will have done so way sooner than Kurzweil had in mind.

 

Nanobots in mice? I googled the matter and came up basically blank. Apparently, we have made some very small machines but nothing that could be even close to a proper nanobot, at least as I understand the matter.

 

And yes, I still see a heat problem. The issue being not that a single nanobot will produce more than a fiddling tiny micro-calorie or so. But scaled up to production level, what is the total mass of nanobots that one person may want/need to carry around with them? If you can get by with a total of a couple of grams of nanobot, then you can probably shift the heat load around just by normal thermoregulation. On the other hand, if you need to have a few kilograms of nanobots, then thermoreuglation by itself will not be enough to keep your body temperature in the safe zone.

 

They could easily do so if we increased the efficiency of our energy use at peak, and in particularly if we developed better batteries.  It's all about the batteries for renewable energy- the power is there, it's just very unreliable (e.g. only during the day).

 

This is a kind of silly prediction.  Sorry, there's more fossil fuel than that.  See tar sands, and the *massive* amount of oil in the arctic region.

We may have hundreds of years of oil left if we use the (readily accessible but currently more  expensive) technology to access it.  It's just less convenient.

 

*and* I will remind you that oil is a renewable resource, and we don't know how fast it renews yet.

 

 

Okay, wrong on two points here.  Breeder reactors are not theoretical- though they are generally illegal because they can make weapons grade material very easily.  Also, the supply of fissionable material on Earth is extremely large, and is in no way likely to run out in the foreseeable future.

Critics of nuclear power like to flap nonsense about how it's so limited; this just isn't the case.  left wing conspiracy theories.

 

 

That sounds like right wing conspiracy theory shit.  Hey, at least your misinformation is balanced. 

Semiconductor solar panels, because the process of yielding pure semiconductors is energy intensive, don't have an extremely large return on energy over their lifetimes, but it is a slight positive return.  There's nothing magical about energy from oil that allows production of solar panels where energy from solar would not.  We simply would not be doing this stuff if it cost more energy to produce the solar panels than they make back over their lifetimes.

There are also other forms of solar power which are nearly 100% efficient and require very little energy to produce-- see solar cooking/heating by way of parabolic reflection.  Heating water by way of solar during the day for use in reservoirs of hot water at any time (a large power drain) is done throughout many countries.

And there's also thermoelectric and sterling engine based power to think about.

The organic dye based solar is perhaps not yet proven technology, but you're ignoring quite a bit that is.

 

 

Hydrogen is a means of energy storage- it needs to be sourced somewhere.  It is not an illusion, it is just misunderstood.

 

 

This is pretty much your only point I can't squarely argue with.

 

 

Tokamak based fusion is only one kind of fusion- and the most dubious.  There are other kinds of fusion- including forms of uncontained fusion and focus fusion of heavier elements with hydrogen.  It's a sly bit foolish to put forth such a general prophesy about the future of all fusion.

 

Of all of the things that will be problems, a drastic shortage of energy is very unlikely to be one of them (although we may never have as much as we'd like- we'll always use what we have and then want more).

"massive arctic oil reserves" barely keep up with rising demand in the USA alone

 

Canadian tar sands will barely change anything, unless you are talking about massive environmental damage.

"Canadian conventional oil production peaked in 1973, but oil sands production is forecast to increase to at least 2020"

 

I know that saying 40 years is a very rough prediction, but it's very hard to make an accurate one. Nonetheless there is now a huge gap between discoveries and production. 

 

The problem is not so much as oil depletion but peak oil production that in my opinion already happened starting in 2005. We are now at a plateau. 

 

OPEC stated reserves are probably wrong:

Energy will have cyclical, ever increasing prices in the future, because of the inflection of the production curve. My view is that, under our current economic system, this will bring a hard and long term depression worldwide. That is until we can get an energy source as plentiful and easy to use as oil. There are sectors of the economy which are seriously threatened, like commercial aviation. I foresee a rebirth of the zeppelin.

What I see in Portugal is wind generators everywhere along the coast. One of the biggest solar parks in the world is here also. However last data points to 60% of all the electricity consumed comes from non renewable sources. More optimistic data has to come out so I can have a more optimistic opinion.

Uranium reserves are not a closed subject. Furthermore, to put into perspective, replacing a basic energy like coal for example, with nuclear would put such a pressure on uranium demand that it would soon run out (unless breeders were used) not to mention the huge costs of such an endeavor.

 

World Energy consumption

 

With such an high EROEI I think there are no alternatives to conventional oil.

 

Well, TYVM.

 

 

Actually, that may well be a good thing. Remember that the second law of thermodynamics will be obeyed. You want to see irreversible global warming? Give humans an unlimited cheap source of energy. Even if it produces no chemical pollution, it will inevitably produce pollution in the form of heat.

 

Now current ideas of global warming refer to energy from the sun becoming eat that can't escape back into space. However, heat pollution generated in the environment is still heat and if we make more than can get out into space, then the earth will heat up.

 

 

 

 

 

Not now. No reasonable person expects them to do so. However, they can account for some percentage of our energy consumption. Pick number for that percentage, any number will do. If properly developed, they will at the least stretch out the supplies of petroleum.

 

 

That depends on what set of numbers you are using. The 40 year number is predicated on a few assumptions. For example, if we never develop renewables or build another nuclear reactor. It also happen to be based on a specific type of petroleum which is the stuff that is fairly easy to get to and has a relatively large EROEI.

 

That is related to what is going on with the current gulf oil spill. BP is going after oil that is harder to get to but still has a similar EROEI. There are also forms of petroleum that are easy enough to get to but have a lower EROEI such as tar sands and heavy crude (neither of which is currently considered to be “on the books” as exploitable reserves). Then there is methane hydrate, which is what clogged the first “top hat” that BP tried to use to cap the well. It is basically a form of natural gas that only exists in certain very specific conditions such as the deep ocean or the permafrost in high latitudes.

 

 

Umm no. once again, the devil is in the details.

 

The fast breeder reactor is basically a long dead design that was seen as attractive because it could produce about 101% of the fuel that it burned up. As Blake noted, it was scrapped largely out of concern for the risk of nuclear proliferation.

 

However, there are many designs for reactors and they all have a number for breeding efficiency. The lowest is probably the naval designs that use 98% U235 mixed with a burnable high neutron absorption cross section. Due to the initial refinement of the fuel, they breed essentially no new fuel.

 

Past that, all the standard designs for reactors now deployed are running in the range of 100.2% breeding efficiency for light water reactors up to about 100.8% for heavy water reactors. In that sense, one could say that all reactors are breeders. In fact, the reason why fuel is removed from a reactor after a couple of years is because of the fact of the breeding. The fuel essentially becomes more powerful than the reactor is designed to use.

 

Also, there is the thoruim fuel cycle. Thorium is not a burnable fuel for a reactor. However, it is very common, easily refined and only exists in a single isotope, which when introduced into a conventional reactor, will itself breed usable fuel. There is probably enough trivially recoverable thoruim around the world to last us for several thousand years.

 

 

Dependent on oil as an energy source not as a material. As I say, energy can be had where and when we want it. It is more a question of investment than anything else. Give it time and it can happen.

 

 

Hydrogen is currently dependent on petroleum. Not only for the energy but also because commercial hydrogen is made from petroleum. Heavy petroleum is refined into lighter products by increasing the ratio of hydrogen to carbon at the molecular level. All of the industrial hydrogen that we need is produced by tapping some off during the refining.

 

Given a good energy source apart from petroleum, we can produce hydrogen more or less trivially from water.

 

One proposal that I have seen involves the rebuilding of the national energy grid using superconducting cable. Given sufficient nuclear capability, it is well within reason to produce hydrogen to use as te cryofluid needed to keep the cables at operating temperature. At the end point of the cable (where it arrives in a city), large quantities of hydrogen are present and that can be used to feel fuel cells, which among other things can be small enough to put in your car.

 

 

I have not looked into that one very much. It would probably be a good way to reduce CO2 output from fossil fuel power plants though.

 

 

Well, the ITER is on track to be able to produce break even power in about another eight years. Due to some cost over runs, the sponsoring nations are right now negotiating to pump another 1.5 billion bucks into the project in order to hit the target. There are also a number of labs that are about that close to break even with inertial confinement.

 

That is of course only the next step in getting us on target for commercial fusion but it is a big one and we could well be there in another decade after that.

 

Which relegates (potential) energy crises to myth status. Also, I believe I was referring to ITER in my previous post, but can't be sure.

The problem with fossil fuels, is that it's used in damn near everything with regards to modern economies.

 

Kapkao, I think you're out of your element here and missed what I said.  My point was only that hydrogen is not a *source* of energy, but a means by which to distribute it.  The source, even as per your example, is something other.

The problem with hydrogen as a means of distribution is that, while it could be fine for homes, it's not very useful for cars because it isn't very dense.  There is research into metal hydrides and other means to trap the hydrogen in a solid to hold it in more space efficient fuel tanks without absurd amounts of pressure and cooling systems.

We'll have to see where that takes us, as to whether hydrogen (for fuel cells, and not primitive combustion) is a useful means of distribution of that energy.

 

 

You don't know how much oil is in Alaska or how useful tar sands will be, but that wasn't all I was talking about.  There's a substantial amount in regions of Canada (and some disputed territory) currently covered by ice.

There are also sources of methane and other hydrocarbons, and carbon, deep in the Earth that make all of the oil ever used by humans look like nothing more than a drop in the bucket.

We could ask the question "Will we find/access it in time to make use of it?", and that is an apt question- but an even more important one is "Should we bother?"  To the latter, I'd have to say probably not.

 

 

We have one for line transmission- it's called fission.

And it's much more likely that we'll move towards high speed trains for land transport than profoundly slow zeppelins, and maintain aircraft that are simply more efficient for overseas transit.

Do you have any grasp of drag forces or aerodynamics at all?  Increase the surface area of a body and drag increases at a prohibitively exponential rate- zeppelins simply can not move fast; they'd take more fuel than airplanes to even approach the same speeds.  Sure, they're cute, but that's all they have going for them unless you want to move at a snail's pace.

 

...That you don't understand the significance that 40% is coming from renewable resources is amazing.  That you don't find optimism in that speaks only to some perverse desire of yours not to.

You do understand that this accounts for most daily usage, with non-renewables kicking in at night due to deficiencies in battery technology?

What we're waiting for, for solar, is new power storage technology.

Once that is achieved, Infrastructure need only be scaled up for those numbers in central and south America to exceed local use. 

The only issue now with power storage is that it's slightly more expensive than non-renewables.  If those sources of energy raise in price, you'll see a boom in the renewable sectors.  It's simple economics.

 

 

And yet you speak as if they are- conveniently from the opposite stance.  You are so certain that they will run out "soon".

 

http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/News/2006/uranium_resources.html

 

Only considering the Uranium we know about and can access now, our 'reserve' should last at least 80 years.  And using breeder reactors with *just* the uranium, we should be able to get over 2,000 more years out of it (at least 30 times the efficiency)- and that's without using Thorium.

Being very conservative and assuming that those figures only accounted for nuclear power being used for 10% of the world's energy, that would still be at least 200 on merely uranium if it took over for everything else.

Thorium is at least three times as abundant, so it would just be silly to suggest we would get any less than 800 years out of *known* fission technology.

Lets say we increase our energy use by a factor of ten, and it's all nuclear, that would still provide at least 80 years of fuel without any breakthroughs in technology or processing-- and no new discoveries of resources.

If we have any confidence in current geological estimates, we should be able to access at least five times that much with reasonable exploration efforts- giving us at least 400 years of power if we aren't complete idiots about it.

And that's just out of the stuff that's readily available- even at that absurd rate of consumption (ten times current power usage, all nuclear).

 

 

 

That's like saying "You can't drive across the country (unless you stop at a gas station)"

Not using breeder reactors is profound stupidity- even suggesting that we might not use them is stupid in the context of any knowledge of economics or politics- a large part of the energy released is in the form of neutrons.

 

Why would we not use breeder reactors?  And why would we not reprocess all of our previously spent fuel in doing so?

 

Is it because we don't have the technology?  No.

Is it because it's environmentally dangerous?  No.

 

Currently, raw fuel is dirt cheap (in the neighborhood of $60 a pound)- and reprocessing is slightly more expensive than just using it once through.

Reprocessing can also facilitate the production of weapons grade fissile material- a concern in certain third world countries.

 

If the raw uranium becomes diminished, we will simply begin reprocessing as the price goes up, and get at least 30 times the fuel out of it.

As to what we'll do about third world countries- we will either have to stabilize their governments, accept that they will have WMDs, or pipe them energy from stable regions.

There's no reason that the major world powers, however, will not be reprocessing fuel in breeder reactors.

 

Your logic is not entirely wrong, but your scale is way off.  Humans aren't capable of producing enough heat to make a difference- what we are capable of doing is worsening the greenhouse effect.

 

The hotter something is, the brighter it glows; with no greenhouse, that heat radiates away easily into space; if we really did produce enough heat to make a difference [we couldn't; not even deliberately] then all we would have to do is lessen the greenhouse effect by an extremely small amount to compensate for it.  OR we could mount a few mirrors and reflect a bit of visible light back into space. 

 

Remember, the greenhouse is trapping solar radiation falling over the 98 - 99% of the Earth that is uninhabited by humans.

To put into perspective the mind-bogglingly large amount of power that is:

 

Sunlight is well over a kilowatt per square meter during peak time.  Of course, the Earth rotates, so we generally get about a quarter of that on average- some 340 Watts.  About a third of it is actually reflected, so we're left with about 226 Watts per square meter.

 

The surface area of the Earth is about  5.1 e14 square meters.

 

That's about 173,400 terawatts.

 

To put this absurdly large amount of power into perspective, the world uses about 15 terawatts of power.

 

That's not one, not two, not three, but four orders of magnitude larger.

 

We could multiply our usage by a hundred, and it's very unlikely anybody would notice (particularly because hot spots like cities radiate out into space like glowing coals).  However, trap a bit more of that 173,400 terawatts in as heat over a broad area, and you get a slight overall temperature change which doesn't increase black body radiation significantly, and that makes a big difference.

 

 

 

 

That's really quite clever; I haven't heard that one.

 

Except I wasn't even responding to you...

 

Edit; well, maybe I was... o.O Memory is defective, I suppose.

I don't recall disputing this.

Correct, it is gas. ... and?

I guess it depends on whatever your definition of "primitive combustion" is (my guess is the current automotive engines used today.)

Yes, pressurized (frozen or condensed) hydrogen was what my original reference was to.

 

 

That's what had me confused.  I thought you were disputing it with a non-dispute, which is why I thought you have misread me.  I suppose we'll never know.

 

 

 

There's no reason they can't.  Any suggestion to the contrary is simply superstitious, going against all knowledge in the field of material science, and I won't humor it.

 

 

WTF?

How do you reason that?

 

 

Again: WTF?

Yes we have.  Many.  And we've been doing it for decades.  They aren't very smart, but artificial neural networks are defined by the ability to learn and solve problems; that's why we use them.

 

 

Not necessarily.  Being so would be akin to being against gravity.  It's an emergent property of technological evolution and it's going to happen.  Why should I mind something inherently natural and inevitable?

That said, neither am I necessarily for it.  It is a change... that's all.  It will mean different things to different people.

 

Yes, one generally speaks in the present with regards to evident scientific fact. 

 

For example, I can say: a Yottawatt laser is very powerful.

 

Yes, it is.  Are there any?  Doesn't matter.  I'd be willing to bet you anything that there are many, many machines currently alive (just not necessarily in this location).

 

 

 

Or just good old fashioned chemical or mechanical reproduction.

 

 

 

That is learning.

 

 

 

Economic ones, and some people not knowing what to do, or being dismayed over having no purpose- some reacting against it violently.  How do you think teamsters will respond to the mass proliferation of robot workers?

 

Ultimately, it just needs to reproduce all by its lonesome.

 

However, the idea of any organism reproducing on its own is kind of absurd- by that definition, in requiring it to engage in the entire process by itself, humans aren't alive because we have to pull certain building blocks from other organisms in order to build more of ourselves.

So, what's the difference in my eating a soy bean to get a hand full of amino acids to assemble cells out of, and an assembling machine getting the parts it needs to build another one of itself from a shipping crate?  Objectively, not really any.

That's what makes the ideas of an objective qualification of 'life' such nonsense- it's all a matter of degree and kind of autonomy, growth, and reproduction.

 

Chemical, biological- it's all the same when you get down to it.

 

 

 

I was fresh out of them, thanks for the loaner!

 

Here's a little link for Kapkao:

 

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/7/26/

 

It might help explain the whole concept of a learning intelligence (and some of those social issues I was talking about).

I've read two of Kurzweil's books so far. I'm totally on board with it, believe he may be onto something, and in fact, hope I live long enough to see it happen. I find it intensely exciting.

 

I agree, I was only trying to scratch the surface.  Of course, there are also subjectively positive consequences.  Whether one outweighs the other is entirely opinion.

Ignoring the rest of your ...is English your first language?  Anyhow, you don't need to believe in fusion power.  We already have it.  We've had it for a few decades.  Have you ever heard of JET (Joint European Torus), ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor), TFTR (Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor) or the many other experimental fusion (related) projects (even others aside from tokamaks)?  Not only have we the capability to produce fusion power, we're getting closer and closer to a sustainable fusion reaction that exceeds the minimum Q value (more energy from the fusion reaction than it takes to begin or sustain it) for an efficient reactor.  There are real hurdles in producing the power efficiently and without the tremendous cost it now takes, but the research is advancing and the experiments have led to advancement in future experimental designs.