I know FoxNews is in a bind because their audience adores Trump and so they must do anything, even lie, to please them (and we know this because it was proven in discovery for the Dominion trial, which forced them to settle for the better part of a billion dollars), but it must be very humiliating that Trump is constantly mocking and insulting the corporation and they have to sit there and simp for him nonetheless. (I know they are not the main subjects of these posts, but they and Rupert are part of it).
It is telling that Trump appears to confuse energy, which he certainly has, with mental acuity.
What would be the effect of removing national insurance on employment income and putting it on non-employment income ?
I suppose you could do it on a gradual basis by decreasing the first and increasing the second by 1% a year until they were level.
Obviously the rentiers and oldies would hate it but part of the reason for introducing it would be to transfer wealth to workers and the young.
Absolutely not. The whole reason national insurance was created in the first place was so workers would contribute for insurance and benefits if unemployed and that expanded to contributions to fund state pensions and also some healthcare.
National insurance should be hypothecated and return to those aims. The inheritance tax threshold should be increased to £2 million instead so older people can ultimately pass on more of their assets to their children and grandchildren, nephews and nieces
Why shouldn't non-workers contribute to those things ?
And given that only about 5% of estates pay inheritance tax your idea would be a tax cut on unearned income for the very rich.
Is this really your view as to what the Conservative party should be for ?
They did, they paid in national insurance when they were working. Now most estates in the south especially are above the IHT threshold. Absolutely the Conservative party should be about preserving wealth and inheritance in the family, that is what Toryism has always been about, even before free market liberals joined it to keep out Labour
"preserving wealth and inheritance in the family" = not paying their fair share of taxes, especially on massive capital gains orchestrated by the "Conservative" Party. Which used to be one of hard work and self-respect. Now, no longer.
They already paid tax on that estate and income and assets their working life.
The Tory party has always been a party which has supported inherited wealth, indeed even Thatcher would arguably have been a Gladstone free market Liberal rather than a Tory in the 19th century. Today's Conservative Party does indeed support hard work and the free market on the whole (certainly compared to Labour) but those are add ons from free market liberals, inheritance is more a cornerstone of Toryism
THEY DID NOT PAY TAX ON THAT INCOME FROM MASSIVE CAPITAL GAINS.
Look at how estates are de facto immune from CGT.
CGT allowance when you are alive - 6k, 3K next year.
Dead, effectively 500k for many.
They paid council tax on it, stamp duty when they bought it and income tax on the income which bought it and paid for the mortgage
Interesting you are arguing they paid income tax on the income which bought it, when you want 2 million handed down tax free to you to buy a property
The present allowances are more than generous and I do not support increasing them, just as I do not support the triple lock
Forget allowances, inheritance tax should be abolished altogether.
Inheritance should just be liable to income tax on the entire inheritance instead. Which should include National Insurance as should all incomes, not just salaried ones.
I have no issue of applying income tax to estates though I doubt any politician is brave enough to propose it
Estates are wealth and assets not income, unless let out and you get rent from them
Then why is IHT paid on them
As it is an inheritance tax on assets not an income tax
I'm reading Robert Nozick's "The Examined Life". It's very good.
In it, he supports the idea of people who create wealth passing it on to their loved ones tax free. There is a bond. Emotionally it feels right. The problem is that it then can get passed down through generations, unknown to the original donor, creating unfair inequalities.
His solution is that only the first inheritance eg to children or grandchildren, is tax free. Subsequent legacies by the recipients of the original inheritance have any original inheritance taxed at 100%.
I thought I had come up with that idea in 2013, but the book you mention is from 1989
What would be the effect of removing national insurance on employment income and putting it on non-employment income ?
I suppose you could do it on a gradual basis by decreasing the first and increasing the second by 1% a year until they were level.
Obviously the rentiers and oldies would hate it but part of the reason for introducing it would be to transfer wealth to workers and the young.
Absolutely not. The whole reason national insurance was created in the first place was so workers would contribute for insurance and benefits if unemployed and that expanded to contributions to fund state pensions and also some healthcare.
National insurance should be hypothecated and return to those aims. The inheritance tax threshold should be increased to £2 million instead so older people can ultimately pass on more of their assets to their children and grandchildren, nephews and nieces
Why shouldn't non-workers contribute to those things ?
And given that only about 5% of estates pay inheritance tax your idea would be a tax cut on unearned income for the very rich.
Is this really your view as to what the Conservative party should be for ?
They did, they paid in national insurance when they were working. Now most estates in the south especially are above the IHT threshold. Absolutely the Conservative party should be about preserving wealth and inheritance in the family, that is what Toryism has always been about, even before free market liberals joined it to keep out Labour
"preserving wealth and inheritance in the family" = not paying their fair share of taxes, especially on massive capital gains orchestrated by the "Conservative" Party. Which used to be one of hard work and self-respect. Now, no longer.
They already paid tax on that estate and income and assets their working life.
The Tory party has always been a party which has supported inherited wealth, indeed even Thatcher would arguably have been a Gladstone free market Liberal rather than a Tory in the 19th century. Today's Conservative Party does indeed support hard work and the free market on the whole (certainly compared to Labour) but those are add ons from free market liberals, inheritance is more a cornerstone of Toryism
THEY DID NOT PAY TAX ON THAT INCOME FROM MASSIVE CAPITAL GAINS.
Look at how estates are de facto immune from CGT.
CGT allowance when you are alive - 6k, 3K next year.
Dead, effectively 500k for many.
They paid council tax on it, stamp duty when they bought it and income tax on the income which bought it and paid for the mortgage
Interesting you are arguing they paid income tax on the income which bought it, when you want 2 million handed down tax free to you to buy a property
The present allowances are more than generous and I do not support increasing them, just as I do not support the triple lock
Forget allowances, inheritance tax should be abolished altogether.
Inheritance should just be liable to income tax on the entire inheritance instead. Which should include National Insurance as should all incomes, not just salaried ones.
I have no issue of applying income tax to estates though I doubt any politician is brave enough to propose it
Estates are wealth and assets not income, unless let out and you get rent from them
Then why is IHT paid on them
As it is an inheritance tax on assets not an income tax
I'm reading Robert Nozick's "The Examined Life". It's very good.
In it, he supports the idea of people who create wealth passing it on to their loved ones tax free. There is a bond. Emotionally it feels right. The problem is that it then can get passed down through generations, unknown to the original donor, creating unfair inequalities.
His solution is that only the first inheritance eg to children or grandchildren, is tax free. Subsequent legacies by the recipients of the original inheritance have any original inheritance taxed at 100%.
I thought I had come up with that idea in 2013, but the book you mention is from 1989
“ The single most important assumption in this paper is that energy consumption will increase by 2% per year. This kind of exponential growth leads to outlandish estimates for the amount of tidal energy that society will demand.”
“ I'm not sure the author realized this, but they're actually making a statement about how crazy exponential growth is. Not about the sustainability of tidal power. This becomes obvious once you look closer at what that 2% growth rate (as assumed in the post) implies.”
“ An important caveat: this article assumes that energy consumption will continue to increase exponentially to get the 1000 year timeline of draining the rotational energy of the Earth.”
As far as energy growth goes, I've always thought that a Dyson sphere gives us a nice target to aim for, for the next hundred years or so. (After that, we would have to start using more than one star.) Not that we can get there, in that amount of time, but having such a target gets us moving in the right direction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere
A Proper Civilisation (TM) will control more energy than is emitted in the entire galaxy it is in.
Matt Goodwin @GoodwinMJ Brexit has: 1/ Strengthened our representative democracy 2/ Given us trade deals without having to pay EU 3/ Allowed us to make new deals not possible in EU 4/ Allowed us to have points based immigration system 5/ Allowed us to align with faster growing parts of the world
Just as an aside, I saw a pretty alarming bit of research on Friday calling for a global moratorium on tidal energy. It was quite compelling and essentially it outlined that tidal energy isn't renewable and using it at scale would be catastrophically bad. If we used tidal to power just 5% of global energy needs the resulting slowdown in our orbital speed would mean our orbit becomes tidally locked to the moon within 50-60 years, that's 27.8 current days per rotation.
I've requested more information for the coming week but I took a cursory look at the maths on Friday and it definitely checks out.
Wtaf? Do you have a link?
(Consider me very dubious.)
PS The moon is already tidally locked to the Earth, of course, so what is being referred to here?
Likewise. Makes no sense on first glance.
Yes it does, there is a net energy transfer already which is causing a very tiny slowdown in our orbital speed and that's just from natural tidal forces that create friction. Man made friction would be a few orders of magnitude higher than natural tidal friction so the net energy transfer from the moon's orbit gets a lot higher.
The 2% growth in energy consumption per year for a 1000 years is untenable - it would lead to global energy consumption being 400 billion times what it is today. (1.02^1000 = 398,264,651)
Why wouldn't it be if we become a space faring civilisation? Though I'd imagine some kind of nuclear fusion would be required for that.
If we became a space-faring nation? Faring where?
If interstellar, planet Earth would probably become some huge nature reserve - the energy consumption would be elsewhere.
In 1820 global energy consumption was 6,264 TWh Roughly 2 centuries later it was 178,899 TWh
So that's a 2755% increase in that time.
If power is generated renewably, why shouldn't such growth continue at a comparable rate? That's part of the purpose of renewable energy, we can use it renewably and continue to use it if it is renewable.
1. World population has grown eight-fold in that time, it's not going to multiply by 8 every 200 years for the next 1000.
2. Energy consumption per capita is 350% over 200 year, which implies a growth rate per capita of 0.6% pa.
That's a remarkably low per capita increase, all things considered.
I'm instinctively with BR on energy production and consumption being a good thing, and it's why I'm so excited about the low marginal cost of renewables.
But it is worth reflecting that energy efficiency might be an even cheaper way to drive growth, and the UK's fall in energy consumption over the last decade isn't necessarily a bad thing.
What would be the effect of removing national insurance on employment income and putting it on non-employment income ?
I suppose you could do it on a gradual basis by decreasing the first and increasing the second by 1% a year until they were level.
Obviously the rentiers and oldies would hate it but part of the reason for introducing it would be to transfer wealth to workers and the young.
Absolutely not. The whole reason national insurance was created in the first place was so workers would contribute for insurance and benefits if unemployed and that expanded to contributions to fund state pensions and also some healthcare.
National insurance should be hypothecated and return to those aims. The inheritance tax threshold should be increased to £2 million instead so older people can ultimately pass on more of their assets to their children and grandchildren, nephews and nieces
Why shouldn't non-workers contribute to those things ?
And given that only about 5% of estates pay inheritance tax your idea would be a tax cut on unearned income for the very rich.
Is this really your view as to what the Conservative party should be for ?
They did, they paid in national insurance when they were working. Now most estates in the south especially are above the IHT threshold. Absolutely the Conservative party should be about preserving wealth and inheritance in the family, that is what Toryism has always been about, even before free market liberals joined it to keep out Labour
"preserving wealth and inheritance in the family" = not paying their fair share of taxes, especially on massive capital gains orchestrated by the "Conservative" Party. Which used to be one of hard work and self-respect. Now, no longer.
They already paid tax on that estate and income and assets their working life.
The Tory party has always been a party which has supported inherited wealth, indeed even Thatcher would arguably have been a Gladstone free market Liberal rather than a Tory in the 19th century. Today's Conservative Party does indeed support hard work and the free market on the whole (certainly compared to Labour) but those are add ons from free market liberals, inheritance is more a cornerstone of Toryism
THEY DID NOT PAY TAX ON THAT INCOME FROM MASSIVE CAPITAL GAINS.
Look at how estates are de facto immune from CGT.
CGT allowance when you are alive - 6k, 3K next year.
Dead, effectively 500k for many.
They paid council tax on it, stamp duty when they bought it and income tax on the income which bought it and paid for the mortgage
Interesting you are arguing they paid income tax on the income which bought it, when you want 2 million handed down tax free to you to buy a property
The present allowances are more than generous and I do not support increasing them, just as I do not support the triple lock
It's the whining and sense of entitlement that gets me. Where's the self-reliance and self-respect of Mrs Thatcher? But I forget, she wasn't a True Tory in the 2023 sense.
No Thatcher wasn't a true Tory in the 1823 sense
Which is why she was a good Prime Minister.
And why the true 1823 Tory party went out of business in 1834. Good riddance to that.
No, Rees Mogg, Bill Cash, the Marquess of Salisbury, even Boris and Sunak sometimes would have been 19th century Tories.
Yes, they would have been, but that's not the party they're in so perhaps those entryists should be kicked out and form a real "true Tory" party. And it is also why Mogg and Cash* are regarded as eccentrics and weirdos, the Marquess of Salisbury is not even worth mentioning, and Sunak is going to deliver the Tories to a well deserved period of Opposition.
Boris isn't an 1820s Tory by any stretch of the definition. Boris is interested in Boris, not obsolete 19th century philosophies.
* Actually to be fair to Cash, as eccentric and weird as he can be, he's not as bad as that. Mogg is, yes.
Yes it is the party they are in, the original Tory Party is still there, it just added on some free market liberals.
Indeed the impact of Brexit eg leaving the single market free trade area and restricting immigration has seen the electoral map shift in a more late 19th century direction. Conservatives strongest in rural areas and patriotic working class areas and Liberals making gains in commuter belt
No, the original Tory Party died.
Peel's Conservative Party killed it. Good riddance, no flowers.
Nope, Peel left the Conservative Party he himself created to form a Peelite faction which ultimately merged with the Whigs to form the Liberal Party.
Just as the franchise expanded and faced with the threat of a rising Labour party many of those free market Liberals joined the Conservatives to form today's Conservative Party in the early 20th century
Which is just all the more evidence that their is no continuity of the Conservative Party from the 1820s to today, there isn't even continuity from Peel's day to today.
Either way though, the modern Conservative Party traces its history back to either Disraeli in 1912 or Peel in 1834, not Rees Mogg in the 1820s.
There has been no continuity of purity in that time, and if there had been, the party would have died ages ago. The party has thrived by adapting to the times in the principles Peel and Disraeli etc set out, being updated for then-modern times.
Most of the Peelites rejoined during Derby’s leadership. Most of those who didn’t rejoined with Hartington and the Liberal Unionists. It was only monomaniacal obsessive like Gladstone who didn’t
Now that the Ukrainian Zaporozhe Offensive is grinding to a halt after three months of brutal but absolutely fruitless attacks, a note on how the Russians have shaped the battlefield - in some ways literally - for the last year to win this critical battle. The Russians, the Ukrainians, and NATO all know that the road to Ukrainian victory leads through Melitopol. The Stavka identified the land corridor to Crimea as key terrain before the war - the Russians likely launched a large operation in Ukraine rather than a more limited intervention to "bail out" the LDPR in February 2022 due to their overriding need to secure the Zaporozhe Corridor and prevent Ukrainian forces occupying the Azov coast from threatening Crimea. In turn NATO has developed a clear plan of action to isolate and effectively besiege Crimea should their Ukrainian proxy manage to seize Zaporozhe and left-bank Kherson, likely working off prewar Ukrainian schemes to deter and punish a repeat of Russia's more limited 2014 intervention. Simply put, no other direction of attack promised nearly the potential for a rapid end to the war on Ukrainian terms.
I like the argument that "the maths checks out". Let's hope it does. But that's not the point. What is critical is the initial assumptions used to set up the problem - do they check out? This is not my field but I hae me doots. Once again we miss the likes of David MacKay
I'm looking at the paper now. Yes, you are right about the assumptions.
Yes. As others have pointed out,[1][2][3] the flaw in the paper is the assumption that humanity's energy usage will continue to grow for 2% per year for a thousand years, and that all that usage will be on earth.
To put this in context. Humanity is currently 8 billion. At 2% growth per year it will be 400 x 10^15 people. Given that the earth's solid surface is 150 x 10^6 sqkm, that gives us 20 x 10^9 people per square km, which is 20 x 10^3 people per square metre...
...which is 20,000 people in a space as big as your chair.
What would be the effect of removing national insurance on employment income and putting it on non-employment income ?
I suppose you could do it on a gradual basis by decreasing the first and increasing the second by 1% a year until they were level.
Obviously the rentiers and oldies would hate it but part of the reason for introducing it would be to transfer wealth to workers and the young.
Absolutely not. The whole reason national insurance was created in the first place was so workers would contribute for insurance and benefits if unemployed and that expanded to contributions to fund state pensions and also some healthcare.
National insurance should be hypothecated and return to those aims. The inheritance tax threshold should be increased to £2 million instead so older people can ultimately pass on more of their assets to their children and grandchildren, nephews and nieces
Why shouldn't non-workers contribute to those things ?
And given that only about 5% of estates pay inheritance tax your idea would be a tax cut on unearned income for the very rich.
Is this really your view as to what the Conservative party should be for ?
They did, they paid in national insurance when they were working. Now most estates in the south especially are above the IHT threshold. Absolutely the Conservative party should be about preserving wealth and inheritance in the family, that is what Toryism has always been about, even before free market liberals joined it to keep out Labour
"preserving wealth and inheritance in the family" = not paying their fair share of taxes, especially on massive capital gains orchestrated by the "Conservative" Party. Which used to be one of hard work and self-respect. Now, no longer.
They already paid tax on that estate and income and assets their working life.
The Tory party has always been a party which has supported inherited wealth, indeed even Thatcher would arguably have been a Gladstone free market Liberal rather than a Tory in the 19th century. Today's Conservative Party does indeed support hard work and the free market on the whole (certainly compared to Labour) but those are add ons from free market liberals, inheritance is more a cornerstone of Toryism
THEY DID NOT PAY TAX ON THAT INCOME FROM MASSIVE CAPITAL GAINS.
Look at how estates are de facto immune from CGT.
CGT allowance when you are alive - 6k, 3K next year.
Dead, effectively 500k for many.
They paid council tax on it, stamp duty when they bought it and income tax on the income which bought it and paid for the mortgage
Interesting you are arguing they paid income tax on the income which bought it, when you want 2 million handed down tax free to you to buy a property
The present allowances are more than generous and I do not support increasing them, just as I do not support the triple lock
Forget allowances, inheritance tax should be abolished altogether.
Inheritance should just be liable to income tax on the entire inheritance instead. Which should include National Insurance as should all incomes, not just salaried ones.
I have no issue of applying income tax to estates though I doubt any politician is brave enough to propose it
Estates are wealth and assets not income, unless let out and you get rent from them
Then why is IHT paid on them
As it is an inheritance tax on assets not an income tax
I'm reading Robert Nozick's "The Examined Life". It's very good.
In it, he supports the idea of people who create wealth passing it on to their loved ones tax free. There is a bond. Emotionally it feels right. The problem is that it then can get passed down through generations, unknown to the original donor, creating unfair inequalities.
His solution is that only the first inheritance eg to children or grandchildren, is tax free. Subsequent legacies by the recipients of the original inheritance have any original inheritance taxed at 100%.
How on earth is that policeable?
The executer of an estate has to make a return to HMRC. If you inherit, that goes on your tax record. You pay no tax on the first inheritance. When you die, your executor makes a return to HMRC. Your estate has to pay the value of the first inheritance to HMRC. The rest, if there is any, can be passed on tax free. It's no more complicated than the current setup.
There are details, such as whether to correct for inflation etc, that need to be worked out. But the principle is clear.
But what if I spend my inheritance … and save my salary.
Money is fungible - it would be unjustifiable to assume none if the inheritance is used. If you did there would be zero point in any inheritance
I like the argument that "the maths checks out". Let's hope it does. But that's not the point. What is critical is the initial assumptions used to set up the problem - do they check out? This is not my field but I hae me doots. Once again we miss the likes of David MacKay
I'm looking at the paper now. Yes, you are right about the assumptions.
Yes. As others have pointed out,[1][2][3] the flaw in the paper is the assumption that humanity's energy usage will continue to grow for 2% per year for a thousand years, and that all that usage will be on earth.
To put this in context. Humanity is currently 8 billion. At 2% growth per year it will be 400 x 10^15 people. Given that the earth's solid surface is 150 x 10^6 sqkm, that gives us 20 x 10^9 people per square km, which is 20 x 10^3 people per square metre...
...which is 20,000 people in a space as big as your chair.
The limits on energy use aren't quite as constrained, though. Perfectly conceivable that a future civilisation might use energy in that scale. And doubtful that we'll be recognisably human by then.
Just as an aside, I saw a pretty alarming bit of research on Friday calling for a global moratorium on tidal energy. It was quite compelling and essentially it outlined that tidal energy isn't renewable and using it at scale would be catastrophically bad. If we used tidal to power just 5% of global energy needs the resulting slowdown in our orbital speed would mean our orbit becomes tidally locked to the moon within 50-60 years, that's 27.8 current days per rotation.
I've requested more information for the coming week but I took a cursory look at the maths on Friday and it definitely checks out.
Wtaf? Do you have a link?
(Consider me very dubious.)
PS The moon is already tidally locked to the Earth, of course, so what is being referred to here?
Likewise. Makes no sense on first glance.
Yes it does, there is a net energy transfer already which is causing a very tiny slowdown in our orbital speed and that's just from natural tidal forces that create friction. Man made friction would be a few orders of magnitude higher than natural tidal friction so the net energy transfer from the moon's orbit gets a lot higher.
The 2% growth in energy consumption per year for a 1000 years is untenable - it would lead to global energy consumption being 400 billion times what it is today. (1.02^1000 = 398,264,651)
Why wouldn't it be if we become a space faring civilisation? Though I'd imagine some kind of nuclear fusion would be required for that.
If we became a space-faring nation? Faring where?
If interstellar, planet Earth would probably become some huge nature reserve - the energy consumption would be elsewhere.
In 1820 global energy consumption was 6,264 TWh Roughly 2 centuries later it was 178,899 TWh
So that's a 2755% increase in that time.
Yes, but it didn't happen evenly. The graph grew very slowly between 1820 and 1900, more during 1900 to 1950, and far faster thereafter.
If you compare it to the graph of population, it seems fair to say that energy consumption scales to population
So the underlying assumption of the paper (that energy usage grows on average at 2% pa) is itself assuming that population grows at the same rate. If population grows at 2%pa for 1000 years there will be 400 x 10^15 people. Which is about 20,000 people per square metre of dry land. Which is not credible.
if energy consumption scales to population and that growth in population is not credible, then that energy consumption growth is not credible and the paper is meaningless.
I like the argument that "the maths checks out". Let's hope it does. But that's not the point. What is critical is the initial assumptions used to set up the problem - do they check out? This is not my field but I hae me doots. Once again we miss the likes of David MacKay
I'm looking at the paper now. Yes, you are right about the assumptions.
Yes. As others have pointed out,[1][2][3] the flaw in the paper is the assumption that humanity's energy usage will continue to grow for 2% per year for a thousand years, and that all that usage will be on earth.
To put this in context. Humanity is currently 8 billion. At 2% growth per year it will be 400 x 10^15 people. Given that the earth's solid surface is 150 x 10^6 sqkm, that gives us 20 x 10^9 people per square km, which is 20 x 10^3 people per square metre...
...which is 20,000 people in a space as big as your chair.
The limits on energy use aren't quite as constrained, though. Perfectly conceivable that a future civilisation might use energy in that scale. And doubtful that we'll be recognisably human by then.
How much energy do you think one Earthbound person can use? At a banal level, how many sockets do they have in their living box and what do they plug in to use that energy?
James Heale @JAHeale Latest Conservative leaflets for the Mid Beds by election - light on the blue, heavy on the green. New candidate Festus Akinbusoye billed as a “local Green Belt champion.”
It is a stupid leaflet because most only last the 10 seconds fro the letter box to the bin, so most will think they just got a leaflet from the Greens.
I've seen enough from that leaflet to know I hope he loses the election.
Parliament needs less not more NIMBY scum.
I can remember when nearly all politicians used to support preserving the Green Belt. It wasn't that long ago.
Yes.
That's what's wrong with the country and why we're in such a mess.
The Green Belt is an anachronism that only works if we have a stable population, not rampant population growth.
"The 2% growth in energy consumption per year for a 1000 years is untenable - it would lead to global energy consumption being 400 billion times what it is today. (1.02^1000 = 398,264,651)"
Are you in the UK again using a different definition of "billion" from that standard in the US? This time smaller? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion
4 - four 40 - forty 400 - four hunred 4,000 - four thousand 40,000 - forty thousand 400,000 - four hundred thousand 4,000,000 - four million 40,000,000 - forty million 400,000,000 - four hundred million 4,000,000,000 - four billion 40,000,000,000 - forty billion 400,000,000,000 - four hundred billion
I like the argument that "the maths checks out". Let's hope it does. But that's not the point. What is critical is the initial assumptions used to set up the problem - do they check out? This is not my field but I hae me doots. Once again we miss the likes of David MacKay
I'm looking at the paper now. Yes, you are right about the assumptions.
Yes. As others have pointed out,[1][2][3] the flaw in the paper is the assumption that humanity's energy usage will continue to grow for 2% per year for a thousand years, and that all that usage will be on earth.
To put this in context. Humanity is currently 8 billion. At 2% growth per year it will be 400 x 10^15 people. Given that the earth's solid surface is 150 x 10^6 sqkm, that gives us 20 x 10^9 people per square km, which is 20 x 10^3 people per square metre...
...which is 20,000 people in a space as big as your chair.
The limits on energy use aren't quite as constrained, though. Perfectly conceivable that a future civilisation might use energy in that scale. And doubtful that we'll be recognisably human by then.
How much energy do you think one Earthbound person can use? At a banal level, how many sockets do they have in their living box and what do they plug in to use that energy?
In one Vernor Vinge novel, shortly before the Singularity, one small startup company is manufacturing 10,000 tons of antimatter per day in factories in close orbit above the Sun. But the partners are getting bored with such trivial endeavours.
I like the argument that "the maths checks out". Let's hope it does. But that's not the point. What is critical is the initial assumptions used to set up the problem - do they check out? This is not my field but I hae me doots. Once again we miss the likes of David MacKay
I'm looking at the paper now. Yes, you are right about the assumptions.
Yes. As others have pointed out,[1][2][3] the flaw in the paper is the assumption that humanity's energy usage will continue to grow for 2% per year for a thousand years, and that all that usage will be on earth.
To put this in context. Humanity is currently 8 billion. At 2% growth per year it will be 400 x 10^15 people. Given that the earth's solid surface is 150 x 10^6 sqkm, that gives us 20 x 10^9 people per square km, which is 20 x 10^3 people per square metre...
...which is 20,000 people in a space as big as your chair.
The limits on energy use aren't quite as constrained, though. Perfectly conceivable that a future civilisation might use energy in that scale. And doubtful that we'll be recognisably human by then.
How much energy do you think one Earthbound person can use? At a banal level, how many sockets do they have in their living box and what do they plug in to use that energy?
We'll all be conducting high energy physics experiments for entertainment by then, obviously.
I like the argument that "the maths checks out". Let's hope it does. But that's not the point. What is critical is the initial assumptions used to set up the problem - do they check out? This is not my field but I hae me doots. Once again we miss the likes of David MacKay
I'm looking at the paper now. Yes, you are right about the assumptions.
Yes. As others have pointed out,[1][2][3] the flaw in the paper is the assumption that humanity's energy usage will continue to grow for 2% per year for a thousand years, and that all that usage will be on earth.
To put this in context. Humanity is currently 8 billion. At 2% growth per year it will be 400 x 10^15 people. Given that the earth's solid surface is 150 x 10^6 sqkm, that gives us 20 x 10^9 people per square km, which is 20 x 10^3 people per square metre...
...which is 20,000 people in a space as big as your chair.
The limits on energy use aren't quite as constrained, though. Perfectly conceivable that a future civilisation might use energy in that scale. And doubtful that we'll be recognisably human by then.
How much energy do you think one Earthbound person can use? At a banal level, how many sockets do they have in their living box and what do they plug in to use that energy?
We'll all be conducting high energy physics experiments for entertainment by then, obviously.
Well we have to do something whilst we are balancing 19,999 people on our shoulders.
James Heale @JAHeale Latest Conservative leaflets for the Mid Beds by election - light on the blue, heavy on the green. New candidate Festus Akinbusoye billed as a “local Green Belt champion.”
It is a stupid leaflet because most only last the 10 seconds fro the letter box to the bin, so most will think they just got a leaflet from the Greens.
I've seen enough from that leaflet to know I hope he loses the election.
Parliament needs less not more NIMBY scum.
I can remember when nearly all politicians used to support preserving the Green Belt. It wasn't that long ago.
Yes.
That's what's wrong with the country and why we're in such a mess.
The Green Belt is an anachronism that only works if we have a stable population, not rampant population growth.
We don't have 'rampant population growth.' Our birthrate is well below replacement level, only immigration is increasing the population
Comments
(I know they are not the main subjects of these posts, but they and Rupert are part of it).
It is telling that Trump appears to confuse energy, which he certainly has, with mental acuity.
https://vf.politicalbetting.com/discussion/242/politicalbetting-com-blog-archive-after-icm-another-phone-poll-ipsos-mori-has-ukip-on-12-pe/p3
Unfortunately, David Cameron already nabbed that title.
Hers sounds like a blog post or something an XR activist would put out (replacing world for West, they don't much care for the latter, by and large).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale
Matt Goodwin
@GoodwinMJ
Brexit has:
1/ Strengthened our representative democracy
2/ Given us trade deals without having to pay EU
3/ Allowed us to make new deals not possible in EU
4/ Allowed us to have points based immigration system
5/ Allowed us to align with faster growing parts of the world
I could go on. And on.
I'm instinctively with BR on energy production and consumption being a good thing, and it's why I'm so excited about the low marginal cost of renewables.
But it is worth reflecting that energy efficiency might be an even cheaper way to drive growth, and the UK's fall in energy consumption over the last decade isn't necessarily a bad thing.
To put this in context. Humanity is currently 8 billion. At 2% growth per year it will be 400 x 10^15 people. Given that the earth's solid surface is 150 x 10^6 sqkm, that gives us 20 x 10^9 people per square km, which is 20 x 10^3 people per square metre...
...which is 20,000 people in a space as big as your chair.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37383283
[2] https://vf.politicalbetting.com/discussion/comment/4532720/#Comment_4532720
[3] https://vf.politicalbetting.com/discussion/comment/4532740/#Comment_4532740
Money is fungible - it would be unjustifiable to assume none if the inheritance is used. If you did there would be zero point in any inheritance
Perfectly conceivable that a future civilisation might use energy in that scale. And doubtful that we'll be recognisably human by then.
If you compare it to the graph of population, it seems fair to say that energy consumption scales to population
So the underlying assumption of the paper (that energy usage grows on average at 2% pa) is itself assuming that population grows at the same rate. If population grows at 2%pa for 1000 years there will be 400 x 10^15 people. Which is about 20,000 people per square metre of dry land. Which is not credible.
if energy consumption scales to population and that growth in population is not credible, then that energy consumption growth is not credible and the paper is meaningless.
https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-consumption
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1006502/global-population-ten-thousand-bc-to-2050/
That's what's wrong with the country and why we're in such a mess.
The Green Belt is an anachronism that only works if we have a stable population, not rampant population growth.
Are you in the UK again using a different definition of "billion" from that standard in the US? This time smaller?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion
4 - four
40 - forty
400 - four hunred
4,000 - four thousand
40,000 - forty thousand
400,000 - four hundred thousand
4,000,000 - four million
40,000,000 - forty million
400,000,000 - four hundred million
4,000,000,000 - four billion
40,000,000,000 - forty billion
400,000,000,000 - four hundred billion
What Ginni Thomas and Leonard Leo wrought: How a justice’s wife and a key activist started a movement
Thanks to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, a trove of so-called “dark money” was about to be unleashed. Two activists prepared to seize the moment.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/10/ginni-thomas-leonard-leo-citizens-united-00108082
And for any 'originalists' out there, it clearly has fuck all to do with what the framers understood by the First Amendment.