TL;DR:
An infinite supply of energy and the capability to turn it into the resources you need at the time is magical thinking. It's nice to believe that we can produce a fusion reactor or enough alternatives to run our civilization from here to a Star Trek age of over-abundance.
But that's just magical thinking at this point in time. Please don't underestimate the convenience of oil energy and all that we take for granted right now.
I don't. I'm saying ensure energy infrastructure. While oil is a convenient portable energy source, our primary backbone is coal here in America. Oil's a frevious resource going forth. It causes more problems than it solves.
Coal's only use is to make iron into steel. Oh, also refined into nanotubes or diamonds. Not for burning.
You know what we really don't need? Those glowly rocks that everyone's afraid of. There's safe meltdown reactors like thorium, which if we had better materials would be viable. Enough power to grow the 25 billion people's food for centuries (estimated? we should run the math together).
However, I don't like burning my stockpiles, I'd rather be building it. So, let me continue on.
Energy is not free. None of the alternatives (to oil) is a viable replacement for the foreseeable future.
It takes a whole lot of oil to create a solar panel. You could not run civilization on solar panels and wind turbines and Geothermal just yet.
Actually, there was a recent study that said for the United States, science found that it's feasible to provide renewable power entirely reliability using predicted models of environment. However, assuming it's worse than the current models (which were based on 2060), it might be a toss up, depending on the infrastructure. However, I don't think we should be worrying about a single nation's energy security, but look at a global scale.
World energy security is way more important.
Human civilization already uses about half of the products of photosynthesis on a global scale.
Plants are pretty good solar cells, but they don't thrive in areas without water, such as deserts. Thermal or photovoltaic energy harvesting can benefit though.
If you have the patience this short documentary goes though all potential energy sources and why they are not the solution to our problem, It's from 2012, but it still very much applies today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOMWzjrRiBgCan you tldr? I avoid youtube. I know it probably summarizes your points, but I think it'd probably make artificially limits the scope.
Civilization requires a lot more than energy, so a few solar cell farms or wind turbines won't cut it.
To turn energy into food we need a lot of infrastructure. Growing the same food in a few decades will be a lot more difficult than it is today.
Actually, not that much energy. The infrastructure to carry the energy places is expensive.
Here's a quote from the internet somewhere, I think:
Now, if we cover an area of the Earth 335 kilometers by 335 kilometers with solar panels, even with moderate efficiencies achievable easily today, it will provide more than 17,4 TW power. This area is 43,000 square miles. The Great Saharan Desert in Africa is 3.6 million square miles and is prime for solar power (more than twelve hours per day). That means 1.2% of the Sahara desert is sufficient to cover all of the energy needs of the world in solar energy.
That's a fuckton of power at 10% of the desert. Resource heavy, but luckily... solar cells are made of silicon, which... you know, refined sand...anyway, that's getting a bit off topic.
I did a quick skim and think you mention resource limitations later.
You say vertical farming, I say that takes a lot of resources as well. We don't have a lack of solar energy or even a lack of carbon dioxide in the air, slightly increased plant growth rates using hydro or Aeroponics in high tech farms can be part of the solution indeed may become a necessity but they still need a lot of resources, none the less of which is insulating materials and the ability to run construction equipment (very energy intensive).
Vertical farming has less water waste. It has better yields. It does take more energy and more resources for initial capital until you start valuing
dirt as a resource.
Vertical farming doesn't worry much about pests or disease. It's better monitored than a standard field. Yields are higher too. But it's an early technology that's not perfected. We don't have special seeds that grow under that specific climate condition, they're all geared for traditional mass farming. We haven't really started down that path. But there's hope (MIT Grow Computer). Maybe the future generation will solve the food security through technology.
Having a source of electricity is useless without a source of water. A source of energy doesn't automatically ensure a viable water supply.
Intense rainfall where the ground loses the capacity to store the water is also useless.
I'm assuming we're on earth, and earth's like 70% water or so. If that changes, welp, might as well hope we have a mar's colony cause an asteroid just knocked the moon into earth...
Topsoil that takes centuries to accumulate can be used in years. Acquifers that take thousands of years to fill up can be used in decades.
Topsoil is a resource, but not really needed for food production, just the minerals of the plants. Again, I assumed earth...
I would argue that if all you have is energy you can't necessarily provide everything else.
Example: 100 Gigawatt solar farm in the desert trying to support a settlement of 500 people.
100 gigawatt operating capacity for only 500 people? Neat. Let's assume that it's 100 gigawatt operating capacity balanced out, so it's like really a >100 gigawatt farm, but it puts out only 100 gigawatt a day, or 2400 gigawatt-hour (2.4 terrawatt-hour).
Current market rates are $25 / mwh for industry/bulk energy here in America. Assuming we connected that power to something other than... itself, a grid of sorts, we could easily sell the extra energy, or utilize it for other purposes.
But building infrastructure and stuff. Let's assume have 20% losses in energy along our shitty tin cable to the ocean. We convert salt water using some of that power, and the rest of the power converts it to hydrogen. We either pipe or tank back the hydrogen to use for the heating supply, and portable energy supply for those 500 individuals. The water biproduct after local energy usage could easily be captured and utilized as a local service rather than trying to pump fresh water back.
Energy is abundant. You start by pumping water and using it to grow food. The aquifer dries up.
Man, if you give me an example, let me actually answer instead of trying to assume my answers
Energy isn't abundant, need more energy. Need more to convert that dirty water into clean water and hydrogen.
Let's say that you can desalinate water from the sea. Now you're spending mass amounts of energy to get water transported (without infrastructure) and desalinated (also without infrastructure).
But... my hydrogen infrastructure acts as a rudimentary water delivery network. Along with water conservation techniques, I think my colony could be sustainable.
Rough math says 1 kg of hydrogen = ~16 liters of fresh water. Let's assume this isn't American waste, but we consume only 100 litters per person per day. In reality, that's only burning 6.25 kg of hydrogen per person, per day, which is enough to drive a car about 300 miles. If I remember right, 1 kg of hydrogen takes about 125 kwh of energy to produce. Of course that requires clean water, as far as I know. At the ocean, let's assume it takes 200 kwh (and ~16 liters of sea water) to make 1 kg of hydrogen). So, with our 1,920,000,000 kwh / day, we could make 9,600,000 liters per day. That's enough water for 38,400 average Americans... wtf.
Obviously, if I were doing this, I'd probably convert only absolute requirements required to run infrastructure, and sell the rest off on the grid network. Anything else that couldn't be sold would also be converted (assuming people don't need additional energy during non-peak loads).
A lot of the materials we use today use oil (plastic bottles, plastic tarps, asphalt roads) if that infrastructure craps out, all those will start breaking down.
With enough energy, these are recyclable resources. We can refine the plastics back into oils. Reform plastics from oils. Capturing them with filtering is another question. Doing it without harming the ecosystem is even the more difficult problem.
To use transportation with your electricity you generally need batteries (if you're going to be efficient) but to get batteries you need a lot of minerals that you may not have access to (or the ability to create them). You ran out of batteries, you can't grow food without a stable water supply, your crops fail, you starve....Game Over
Fuck batteries. Fuck their energy density. Fuck their resource uses. No way...but wait, where are we in the example? Cause that's not what I'm about. To be fair if we're in the desert, I'm assuming North Africa.
Could always just offer the democratic republican of congo stability while we rape their lands of natural resources. Rich in battery intensive materials. However, I don't think I could fix all their problems with my tiny bit of solar farm, so no way I'm getting those resources without a much larger solar installation, or some more citizens with technologies.
But I don't use batteries, so I don't starve, therefore I win?
Let's say that you try to make ethanol to run conventional engines. Congratulations, you can't get anywhere close to where oil got us and due to climate change your crop fails, you get no ethanol and you invested a lot of time and human capital.... Game over.
Nope, electric vehicles still. Ethanol -> sugar is bad and a wasteful process, might as well catch that solar directly.
Let's say that the aquifer is big enough that you can pump water as long as you have electricity. Let's even say that your solar panels don't break down (or that you can somehow replace them).
Solar panels are warrantied for 25 years to be at least 80% efficient. Technically, with solar thermal, I just gotta shine that mirror once in a while. What are my 500 colonist doing? I figured maintaining the farm. There's probably going to be transformers, inverters, all that jazz for the distillation plant.
The plastics of your greenhouses start breaking down, without a source of oil and the petrochemical industry you can't replace them. The harsh desert reclaims your food production area.... You starve. Game over.
Recycled ocean plastics would work if I were building out of plastics instead of steel and glass. I'm pretty sure I'm still in the game.
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The only 'game over' would be cascading failures or foreign invasion.
