A Strong Argument For Energy Conservation

Sorry... there will be math. Well, math described... you don't have to do any yourself.

So a physics professor at UCSD has decided to look at US energy consumption and plot it over time and look at what issues we might face if that growth rate is sustained long-term.

It isn't pretty.

My favorite quote:

Let me restate that important point. No matter what the technology, a sustained 2.3% energy growth rate would require us to produce as much energy as the entire sun within 1400 years. A word of warning: that power plant is going to run a little warm. Thermodynamics require that if we generated sun-comparable power on Earth, the surface of the Earth—being smaller than that of the sun—would have to be hotter than the surface of the sun!

Amplify’d from physics.ucsd.edu

Galactic-Scale Energy Posted on 2011-07-12 by tmurphy

Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, we have seen an impressive and sustained growth in the scale of energy consumption by human civilization. Plotting data from the Energy Information Agency on U.S. energy use since 1650 (1635-1945, 1949-2009, including wood, biomass, fossil fuels, hydro, nuclear, etc.) shows a remarkably steady growth trajectory, characterized by an annual growth rate of 2.9% (see figure). It is important to understand the future trajectory of energy growth because governments and organizations everywhere make assumptions based on the expectation that the growth trend will continue as it has for centuries—and a look at the figure suggests that this is a perfectly reasonable assumption. Read more at physics.ucsd.edu

 

See this Amp at http://bit.ly/psJfZD