I think the biggest flaw in the analogy is that Earth isn't a temporally closed system. In the analogy, no progress is made. In the real world, technology increases with time. Technology does two fundamental things: it makes new things possible, and it makes old things cheaper. The analogy doesn't take into account the latter. Yes, we will. 100 years ago, it was not profitable to sell new bicycles for $100 (inflation adjusted). 400 years ago it wasn't profitable to sell high-quality steel swords for less than a year's wages. No, it's not. See above. That's right, but for the wrong reasons. Energy is cheap because of technology, not the reverse. Further, energy is only one part of the equation. Energy alone doesn't let us mine that copper. We also need the mechanical engineering, computers, and more that technology gives us. Technology— scientists and engineers—make things cheap. The "economy" doesn't provide those things, it distributes them. Ideally, as fairly as possible. I think we may hit a transitional point where we've mined all financially feasible materials from Earth, and haven't yet the inexpensive technology to mine elsewhere. But I don't think it will cause an economic collapse. I think Capitalism is at least flexible enough to adapt while science and technology work on giving us renewable alternative materials or the ability to feasibly harvest more non-renewables.We may eventually send human beings to Mars – but we will unlikely do so at a material profit
it is reasonable to assume that it will always be more efficient to extract our primary physical resources from materials on or near the Earth’s surface
Without enough cheap energy, on the other hand, one begins to encounter limits.
the rest of nature isn’t organized to maintain a particular energy intensive way of life
Nature doesn't organise. Nature adapts.
Thanks for the comments! I was wondering whether what is basically an ongoing argument between wasoxygen and myself would draw any interest. The analogy does model the kind of progress you are talking about, if in an admittedly abstract way. Over time, the operators of the box discovered new bar press patterns that got the box to yield up new things. The new patterns also required fewer bar presses – and therefore less raw human effort to repeat. Without addressing the rest of your assertions individually, it appears to me that you have basically reiterated Simon’s position. To reiterate my counter position, the great bulk of modern technological improvements are deeply dependent on energy having a negligible cost. Consider your sword example. The reason high-quality swords cost so much 400 years ago is that there were no open heath furnaces (or Bessemer converters) to make cheap steel. While the knowledge involved in modern steel making certainly is the product of human ingenuity, the tons of carbon consumed in the process isn’t. Knowledge of the open hearth process would have profited a person little 400 years ago, unless he owned a miraculous piece of real estate with iron ore, coal, and limestone all readily at hand. Without these, the transportation cost of moving all these heavy bulk materials would have probably been prohibitive. We eventually figured out how to move (and mine) these materials cheaply – but those processes themselves depend on cheap energy. To paraphrase your statement -- scientists and engineers make things cheap by the application of cheap energy to other material resources. Even products that themselves consume very little energy depend or high energy consumption for the materials that constitute them, for transportation, etc.
Right. There's a reason I picked the steel example. Sure it would. Bessemer converters don't need any extra energy, they use simple techniques to achieve an optimal ratio of carbon. Yeah, you need a little limestone if there are phosphorus impurities, but not a lot. Remember, this is versus wrought iron. Compared to previous techniques for making actual steel (blister steel, crucible steel, Japanese folded steel), you're saving tons of coal (energy) and man-hours. My point is, I think these same principles apply to all technology. It cost the shuttle $45,000/kg to put something in LEO. The Falcon 9 can do it for $9,000/kg. Is there some minimum energy expenditure necessary to put something in LEO? Probably. But if that becomes a limit, science will make the energy cheaper, or we'll figure out new physics. Again, I think cheap energy is a consequence of technology, not the reverse. One might say "This hammer built this house. In fact, the bulk of technological improvement has come from hammers!" Well, no, hammers are a tool, like cheap energy. They help us, but technology gave us those tools. Hammers and energy are physical things. Technology is an idea, like evolution. One more analogy. Consider the statement "carbon makes life possible." Many scientists believe that, actually. I don't. I think carbon is a tool of evolution, like energy is a tool of technology. In lieu of carbon, evolution would have used boron, or silicon, or sulphur, or something else. Likewise, in lieu of cheap energy, we'd somehow figure out how to do the same things. Can I prove it? I'll let you know when we run out of energy. It's beginning to sound like technology is a deity to me. It's not. Rather, I am skeptical of any claim that something is impossible. I'm also not an acolyte of Simon's. I don't think population or free-market will solve environmental problems. Will we eventually be able to fix the oceans we're destroying? Yes, but not before it makes the planet uninhabitable for us. Betting the entire human race against that is madness.Bessemer converters
Knowledge of the open hearth process would have profited a person little 400 years ago
the great bulk of modern technological improvements are deeply dependent on energy having a negligible cost.
It’s good to know we are not in utter disagreement. I agree with you about population, though I probably disagree about what ought to be done about it. I think that free markets probably could solve environmental problems if people were sufficiently educated to create rational market demands – and educated to support free markets as a moral principle. Right now, we have neither free markets nor an informed public so we are kind of discussing how many angels can stand on the head of pin. We also probably disagree about the environmental problems we do or don’t have – but I digress. You might want to look at my initial reply to wasoxygen at the bottom of this thread. I do acknowledge conditions under which Simon might be right about his claim, but his causation would still be in error. You win on the steel example. I won’t concede it proves the rule, but I was wrong on the critical aspects of the process.
I don't see such a clear distinction between the two, such that Simon's arguments would not apply to both. Copper is clearly a material; electricity is clearly a form of energy. Yet a chief application of copper is to carry electricity, so progress in copper availability will help with energy. And technological developments like fiber optics and wireless for carrying signals save both copper and energy. You have suggested that, given sufficient energy, we can manufacture or recycle whatever materials we need. But there is truth in the reverse: if materials to satisfy a need are sufficiently and cheaply available, we need not spend much energy to get them. (You might reply that the energy to mine the copper has already been spent by the time the ingots go on sale at the corner market. Yes, so the cost of the energy is bundled in to the cost of the copper. The customer doesn't care about the breakdown. Can you claim that we keep getting better and better at gathering and refining copper, but not at gathering, distributing, and conserving energy?) Batteries are a technology which show Simonian improvement (ever better, with no end in sight) and help us use energy more efficiently. Engines keep getting more efficient. Information technology helps optimize energy use in all sectors. Just like most any material good, we consume more energy today (aggregate and per capita) than ever before, yet, unintuitively, energy is cheaper and more abundant than ever before. Why is it not a Simonian good?Energy is cheap because of technology, not the reverse.
I think rob05c makes an important claim here that you have not addressed. I don't know if it is true, but it does question what seems to be your tenet that energy, as opposed to materials, is the bottleneck into which we are destined to be trapped.
There is a distinction between physical materials and energy (Einstein not withstanding). Except for the miniscule amount of copper we have shot into space or turned into something else in a nuclear reactor, every gram of it we have ever refined is still on the earth. Even the stuff worn off coins is still in the soil somewhere – however inefficient it might be to retrieve. The energy liberated from fossil fuels is largely gone. The carbon is here, but making CO2 into burnable carbon is a net energy sink. This is simply chemistry. Plants are burnable because they have captured solar energy and turned CO2 into something combustible again. If you have cheap energy you can recycle copper indefinitely but you can’t make cheap energy by using more energy. This is simply thermodynamics. You can get more efficient in your energy use, but not beyond the limits opposed by physics. Modern batteries use lithium, which is in fairly short supply. While you can recycle it, I’m not sure enough exists on earth to make all the lithium batteries we could use. The problem with the substitution theory is that, sooner or later, some unlucky engineer is going to be tasked with making an iPhone87 with nothing more than dryer lint and his own excrement.
I have no doubt but that these challenges will be resolved by ingenuity, as have so many others. Imagine, in the not-too-distant future, a nanotech kernel which could be injected into the Earth's surface, where it would immediately begin constructing a superstructure, larger than a house. It would require small amounts of trace elements already present in the substrate, but most of its mass would be composed of carbon, snatched by some as-yet-unfathomed chemical process straight from the atmosphere and stripped of oxygen. It would also build very many solar panels of low efficiency but high durability to gather the necessary energy to power the process. Engineering the first kernel will be a formidable challenge, but the mature structure will have a feature by which thousands of new kernels are manufactured and automatically scattered in the area, restarting the process — a sort of perpetual energy machine. In time, much of the surface of the earth will be covered with these Automatically Regenerating Biosustaining Replicator units, providing a renewable, portable and comparatively clean energy source. No doubt some traditionalists will complain about the eyesore, though.
Our energy ultimately derives from the sun. Wikipedia says that "The amount of solar energy reaching the surface of the planet is so vast that in one year it is about twice as much as will ever be obtained from all of the Earth's non-renewable resources of coal, oil, natural gas, and mined uranium combined" (emphasis mine). This claim is based, somehow, on a magical-looking chart: Why are you more concerned about energy than physical materials, when we are constantly flooded with more energy than we can conceive of using? Perhaps neodymium will be exceptional in that the nearest substitutes are vastly inferior, and we will have to make do with the supply we (or they?) have. With energy, the supply is basically guaranteed as long as the Earth is in orbit; the cap is on how well we can collect, transport, and store it — all factors amenable to improvement. Individual energy innovations always appear a little corny and optimistic, and they almost certainly will bear only superficial resemblance to future successful energy technologies. But sneering at new developments while they are still in their infancy is a proven way to appear foolish in the future.The energy liberated from fossil fuels is largely gone.
Yes, but fossil fuels have been going out of style since the '70s. If they weren't so dang cheap and plentiful, we would have long since moved on.
I like this: In his defense, the effects of low level radiation weren't really well known at the time. People were really optimistic that nuclear was a godsend. Everyone saw up close what high radiation does in the immediate aftermath of the Bombs, but it took a long time to see that low level ionizing radiation causes severe health problems years on. As a gimmick, they used to have x-ray machines in shoe stores, so that people could see how their feet fit into shoes. Bunch of shoe salesmen got cancer. Tough lesson to learn the hard way.“Nuclear-powered vacuum cleaners will probably be a reality in 10 years.”
I would also argue that most futurists didn't foresee the political effects of nuclear energy. We might have as many safe thorium fission plants as coal today, maybe even viable fusion, if it weren't for the political backlash. We also haven't given up on betavoltaics.
Yes, kind of hard to see the business case for the atomic Roomba. Maybe if you spilled something on Mars. On the other hand, plutonium-powered pacemakers were still running in nine patients as of 2007. Plutonium might be another of those exceptional substances for which there are no good substitutes. But probably the shortage is due to a lack of demand.
I am more concerned about energy than materials because, as I have said repeatedly, materials don't actually get consumed while the energy does. I am not particularly impressed with the chart because I don't know the source and have no reason to trust them, but no doubt our allotment of solar energy is vast. The amount of energy contained in a kilogram of anything is also vast -- it's harvesting it that's the rub. When someone uses solely the energy from a windmill to produce another windmill -- let me know. The problem with the plea that the technologies are immature and will improve dramatically is that they aren't necessarily all that immature. Consider windmills. We've been making generators for well over a hundred years and now make pretty efficient ones. The aerodynamics of the blades is also pretty well worked out. They may improve a little -- but not much. Sooner or later, you get as close to the limits imposed by thermodynamics as you reasonably can for a given technology, and then you have to either live with it or move on to something else.
Can we define "consumption" as getting some useful service from something while changing the form of that thing in a way that is not easily reversible? Let's check it with some examples. Burning gasoline: You and your vehicle move around; gasoline is converted into water vapor, carbon dioxide and trace pollutants. Charging your iPad: You get a few hours of Angry Birds; the electricity is converted to waste heat. Eating a tomato: You get energy and nutrition; the tomato is converted into heat, human flesh, and waste matter. Breathing air: You enable your hemoglobin to power metabolism; the oxygen is bound to carbon and released as waste. I expect you would be more concerned about the long-term prospects for the first two examples, but not the last two. Yet they all represent consumption. Isn't it more important how easily and cheaply we can get more of the stuff we want, be it material or energy, than the difficulty of reversing the consumption process with the same stuff? The materials in a tuna sandwich are pretty effectively consumed when you eat it. It would take unthinkable amounts of energy to reverse that process. I don't see a clear distinction between material resources and energy.
Sorry, I didn't notice this. Tomatoes, tuna and air are renewables. They get replenished by biochemistry and sunlight in a reasonable span of time. Plant a tomato seed in your garden and, with a little luck -- voilà! -- more tomatoes! Pour a gallon of crude oil on your garden and you will only grow a EPA inspector, and believe me -- that's a net energy drain. I'm not telling you anything you don't know. You're just being mischievous with language.
Einstein didn't either. That's another great example. Just like screws have reduced the need for hammers, all kinds of technology reduces the need for energy. Hammers and copper wires and cheap energy are all tools, nothing more. They're all incredibly useful, but not irreplaceable. It's fantastic how little is necessary. Did you know you don't need numbers? For mathematics, all you need are functions. I have great faith in the impossible.energy, as opposed to materials
I don't see such a clear distinction between the two
fiber optics and wireless for carrying signals save both copper and energy
Einstein didn't either.
I won't object to the association, but he didn't say that matter and energy can be interchanged at will, his equation just explained how much of one you can possibly get from the other. I believe emcadwaladr's position is that material availability is only improving thanks to convenient and abundant cheap energy sources, which may go the way of the dodo any time.all you need are functions
Maybe one day I'll learn some Haskell. For now, I'll stick with my imperative chauvanism.I have great faith in the impossible.
I am wary of such language. Things keep getting better and better on so many measures, it is easy to think there is no limit. But there are limits. Maybe we will have an aluminum shortage. There is a lot of aluminum in landfills, we could just mine the landfills. But it's easy to say that; it is not so easy to invent a machine which can burrow through old mountains of garbage and detect and recover the desired materials. The cost to do so may go down year after year, but there will always be a cost, and there is no guarantee that that cost will ever be lower than the benefit.
I was mostly being facetious :) It's not that I don't think we'll have an aluminium shortage. It's that I think we'll figure out an alternative when there is. I think the overarching question is whether technological progress as a whole is an exponential curve, or a logistic curve. I think it's exponential. I'm not sure there exists empirical evidence for either. On one hand, the growth is historically exponential and there's no evidence for that logistic taper. On the other hand, logistic curves are awfully common in physical systems, both human and natural. If there is a hard limit, I for one will be incredibly frustrated. To have the stars within our grasp yet forever out of reach would be infuriating.he didn't say that matter and energy can be interchanged at will
But there are limits. Maybe we will have an aluminum shortage.
it is easy to think there is no limit
imperative chauvanism
I remember genetic algorithms from undergrad AI. Fun stuff.
No analogy is perfect. When the inevitable differences between the source and target of the analogy misrepresent essential features of the source, the analogy is fatally flawed. In this case, the mysterious box is — mysterious. We can only speculate about its function. If that much food came out of a box the size of a breadbox, we could only describe it as a miracle. Given the size of the box, we might assume that all the food to come out of it is stored inside from the start. To suppose that such a box would provide nourishment indefinitely would indeed be comparable to “the guy who jumps off the Empire State Building and says how great things are going so far as he passes the 10th floor.” We might suppose that raw ingredients are stored, perhaps under considerable pressure, in some very efficient manner, and the tasty meals are synthesized by some ingenious mechanical mechanism. But a reputable engineer or chemist could estimate the maximum amount of raw food material that could be stored in a vessel that size, with a weight that can be supported by metal legs. Even the most generous estimations would merely postpone exhaustion of a supply that is measurably finite (say, in terms of kilograms or molecules) from the start. Without the most basic understanding of what goes on inside the box, concern and uncertainty about the future is entirely appropriate. Imagine that your skepticism about Julian’s assurances begins to disturb your sleep. One night, you go down to the basement to have another look at this strange black box upon which your lives depend. To your surprise, you find a number of caterers loading prepared foodstuffs into the box, via a cleverly hidden panel. You see the machine is nothing more than a complicated vending machine. You question the caterers, and find that they are paid by a university which is doing research on human psychology. You convince them to let you accompany them through a secret door behind a curtain you hadn’t noticed, through a long tunnel, to a research institution with a well-stocked kitchen. You learn that there are twenty billion people living comfortably on Planet Earth, mostly in conurbations having a density of several thousand souls per square kilometer. You see wonders that make you feel like a scholar from the Renaissance suddenly transported to the computer age. Food technology, however, is pretty simple. Plants that have been known since the dawn of agriculture are grown in high-rise hydroponic greenhouses, then harvested and processed mechanically. You ask where they get enough energy. Your hosts say it’s hard to explain, but mention that people used to consider boiled whale fat a good source of fuel, and later found it much easier and more efficient to leave the whales alone and pump hydrocarbons up from ten kilometers below the ocean surface. They made two or three more improvements in that direction. Also, polymetallic nodules turned out to be a bit of an unexpected bonanza. They have good people working on the heat death of the universe problem, but it’s a stubborn one. They figure they can get by for another Decade, their slang term for 10^10 years. Thanks for a great article. I think I will order a pizza.To escape the scenario in which the box must run out of food in something less than a decade you have to believe that, somehow, your ingenuity not only extracts the food but somehow brings it into being.
The analogy is imperfect in certain respects -- notably that the contents of our actual box of resources is not an utter mystery to us. It is also somewhat confusing in that what I believe it models best is our energy economy, not our food economy. Nevertheless, I stand by the defense of the analogy I made in the article: our actual physical resources are functionally finite. Your extension of my parable (the secret caterers) is a good example of just what Simon himself was doing. You presume additional resources exist without having any prior indications that they do. Simon took a data set and just extrapolated the graph. There are many points I did not cover because I assumed they would probably come out somewhere in the course of this dialog. One is that I allow the possibility that Simon might turn out to be right in his prediction: “The material conditions of life will continue to get better for most people, in most countries, most of the time, indefinitely. Within a century or two, all nations and most of humanity will be at or above today's Western living standards.” If we… A.) Develop a new cheap and enduring energy source (deuterium fusion, for example) B.) Don’t annihilate each other in a war C.) Don’t make life utterly miserable in peace …then Simon’s rosy prediction will probably come true. Even this, however, won’t mean his theory is correct. His theory makes the assumption that a certain economic mechanism trumps physical considerations, if not always then at least most of the time. That is a position grounded as much on faith and native optimism as on the historical record. An interesting first salvo, BTW. Enjoy the pizza.