DOOM N GLOOM: Updated

Images are world population density and energy use & sources. Notice the population density and energy use are not very well correlated. My blog has been updated with dreary colors. I was going to make a doom n gloom themed banner, but we will see.

I'm sorry, folks. Life as we know it is unsustainable. We are all screwed. There will be a crash and there is nothing we can do about it.

Fortunately, we can somewhat soften the blow. We in America will probably not be as affected as those in poorer countries. Why? Because we are an affluent bunch of sons-o'-bitches. WE have 5% of the world's population. WE consume 25% of the world's energy. If India and China decide to adopt our reckless "standard" of living, we will supposedly need the natural resources of 6 earths. So there.

As I said, there will be a crash. Exponential growth of ANYTHING cannot be maintained. There is a crash and a stabilization. Millions (read billions) of people will die of thirst or starve. People are estimating that the holding capacity of the Earth is roughly 4 billion people. We will probably crash to below that level initially before stabling out.

There are some trends that lead us up to this that have compounded our problems. As the population grew, technology grew, our energy needs grew, carbon emissions grew, the earth's temperature grew. The current great extinction event began and will accelerate. The seas will rise. The coastal cities will need to be TRANSPLANTED. There will be a mass exodus north as all of our arable lands will dry up. We are basically releasing millions of years of accumulated solar energy into our atmosphere by burning oil, of course it's going to heat up around here.

I learned all this from a seminar speaker, Jonathan Trent, who works at Ames at NASA right now and is being funded by a couple Google grants. He said it was up to the young people, who are just forming their lives and deciding what to do with them, to ultimately fix this problem. He says we need to be inspired, motivated, to enter science and engineering to fix this problem. A Second Apollo, as they (the old people) like to call it. I say, good luck, because young people these days are SOOOOO self-absorbed. Look at me, for instance. I think I'm special enough where someone would actually want to listen to what I have to say. Nothing more self-glorifying than a blog. You're never going to be able to convince young people to take up a challenge when they can take the easy way out and do what the generations have done before them. Apparently challenges were alluring in the 60s. I say, the sheer magnitude of this problem is a deterrent in itself.

There is more I will talk about later, so check back for updates. It's not all so gloomy, there's some cool science.

OK, COOL SCIENCE:
Let me start out by saying that this was a very knowledgeable man, Jonathan Trent. He was trying to inspire us. And the science was inspiring. The impending doom that makes it necessary was too much for my nihilistic worldview that day. He talked about a 17-year-old student of his who had very interesting things to say and I will make a small effort to discover her.

Transportation: Personal rapid transit. This would be used in addition to the current road/car system for people doing regular travel, like commuting. It involves ultralight personal "pods" that would seat 1-4 people, and they would run on a magnetic track elevated above the road. You would go to a station, get in one, tell it where to go, and it would take you there without slowing down the other pods. This is better than trains or buses because you don't have to stop when other people want to get off. It would use longish on and off ramps to achieve this. A swedish version has the pods descend from the magnetic track to become electric cars. That seems like a more expensive alternative for the consumer. There are apparently lots of people interested in developing it, but no one wants to be the first one, so Ames is going to be building a test track so they can "kick the tires." Apparently this idea has been floating around for a while, but there are a lot of companies now, here and internationally, that are developing the technology. Seems like a good idea to me. Like a rollercoaster!

Biofuels: Nanotech & Algae approach for aviation fuels (No more organic fuels for cars, sorry)
Nanotech! He's talking about using cellulose, cuz theres tons of waste cellulose from our current industries. The problem is breaking down the cellulose into something useful. He suggest that we start viewing biomolecules, such as proteins and nucleic acids, as building materials, much like engineers view trees. Engineers don't care about studying trees, they just want to build shit out of them. He is currently, in his lab, developing a sort of protein swiss army knife approach where a bunch of different enzymes from a cellulose-chewing anaerobic bacteria are combined onto a larger protein scaffold. The efficiency of the process greatly improves in this sort of configuration rather than all of the enzymes freely diffusing in solution. And then we would grow up tons of this shit and use it to make ethanol? I think.

Algae: Algae makes 10,000 gal of oil/ acre. Most of the oil reserves we are drilling for are really giant seas of dead ancient algae. Water treatment plants alone make lots of algae. He is trying to grow freshwater algae in giant bags in the ocean, tethered to windmills in wind fields (If the bags break, the algae die and no cleanup problem!). The windmills power lights, whatever, for the algae. He's trying to set up a deal with people in Denmark right now where they have these massive offshore windfarms. Apparently Denmark has made windmills feasible by selling a share of the windmill to people who are willing to let them be on their land. So instead of being ugly and annoying, the people hear "cha-ching!" everytime the windmill goes around. I think this sounds like a really cool project. Go Algae!

And then he talked about how we need to see going green not as a chore, but as a mindset, a way of life. That we need to tackle this because it's hard. How decentralized energy is the way to go, and people from all sides of the political spectrum (except the energy companies) have come to this conclusion for different reasons. He talked about how some people think we should have been going nuclear this whole time, because nuclear waste is a better problem than a major city being without electricity for any length of time. Stone age, man. People don't want to invest in this sort of thing now because they think it's too expensive, but how expensive is it going to be to have to physically relocate a major coastal city?

Anyway, the point of all this isn't to save the world. It's to soften the blow, and to assure that whatever population survives, they can have a sort of enjoyable lifestyle instead of returning to the stone age. Anyone who knows my penchant for the post-apocalyptic movies knows that I don't really think that would be so bad.